This fostered a characteristic bitter and stiff outlook in the author, devoid of hopefulness, absolutely submerged in literature, which has provoked many controversies and hostilities.

At El País, he was one of the reporters who was best able to describe the countercultural movement known as La Movida, but his literary quality undoubtedly came from his creative fecundity, his linguistic sensibility and the extreme originality of his style: very careful and complex, creative in its syntax, very metaphorically developed and flexible, abundant in neologisms and intertextual allusions; in sum, of a demanding lyric and aesthetic quality.

He exercised a type of anti-bourgeois criticism of customs and manners, without renouncing the most intensely romantic ego, and, in the words of Novalis, having the intent of giving the dignity of the unknown to everyday life, impregnating it with a desolate tenderness.

[2] Highlights of his very extensive narrative production, in which autobiographical aspects stand out, include: In 1985, Umbral began a series of novels about the most important events in the history of twentieth-century Spain, after the fashion of the Episodios nacionales of Benito Pérez Galdós for the nineteenth century.

He also wrote a set of very personal essays, under such titles as: His preoccupation with slang is shown by: He also published biographical and literary essays presenting original views about classical authors of the 19th and 20th centuries, such as: Other biographies are more revealing: Although autobiography is also present throughout his journalistic work, several of his works are explicitly autobiographical: