“Writers are the best thing that can happen to journalism.”

The novel takes place between the Monastery of San Julian de Samos in 1951 and contemporary Galicia, and connects the past and the present through an investigation that highlights a book that predicts the date of death of some people and how this discovery disrupts everything in the present. Manuscripts, archives, and ancient texts take center stage and put the characters in the position of how the desire for knowledge can become condemnation. Juan Onate, Director of the Association of European Journalists, talks about literature and journalism.

“The Omen” takes the myth of knowledge as punishment. Doesn’t that describe Prometheus?

Knowledge is a punishment. Knowledge in this case leads to serious consequences. Knowing the date you will disappear is a punishment. It can cause absolute chaos. Now, what happens is that it’s also true that it’s great for the plot, but everyone is trying to interfere with her fate. And not necessarily for the common good.

In what sense?

You want to know the history of your destination, but don’t let others know where they’re going. That would be perfect. But on the other hand, there’s also the game of who wants to own that information and for what purpose, which is the second variable of this. It is no longer just a matter of knowing the date of your death personally, but rather seeking help from a source that documents the dates of death of others. This is infinite power in all fields, for the political field, for the media, for whomever you want.

If in your novel The Perugia Effect you talked about the original and the copy, now you come back again with a discovery.

I’m beginning to realize that I have a little obsession with truth and the interpretation that constitutes it, because I think in a way that the climax of the novel has to do with Heisenberg’s principle, which is that we don’t know reality, but rather reality is subject to our way of interrogating it. It seems to me that this is what happens in this novel as well. It seems to me that the analysis that each of us makes of the truth is very relevant, because each one has his own vision and approaches the truth in a certain way and actually has different results.

In this novel, the monk, the historian, and the journalist have three ways of looking at the world.

Very present in the novel is the skepticism with which the historian deals with paranormal phenomena, the religious significance which the monk gives, and takes it into his own sphere, which of course is of interest to him, and the journalist’s vision, which is the general interest it arouses. All three looks seemed very sexy to me. And these two people, if we may add the monk, also have something to do with this thread of time. The eternal, which is suitable for a priest, the past, which is suitable for a historian, and the present, active or living, which is suitable for a journalist.

You are a historian, journalist, and also a writer. What does the novel have that the essay does not?

Fiction allows for musings that sound interesting to me, when put into the character’s voice. I am not saying that they are decisive or that they are self-evident, but they seem to me to be excuses with which I can allow myself these thoughts. A little bit of the same thing happens to me with journalism. I criticize the profession of journalism. It seems to me that things happen that do not convince me, that there is a lot of polarization, that sometimes it is an interested polarization, whether from politics or from journalism, but I think it amuses me to include it in reflections within a novel.

Humberto Eco and Dan Brown, how do you put a different spin on it?Those of us who live in this world of journalism can’t get it out of our way, whether we want to or not. So I think you’re right, that this is the approach in a way, I hope it’s a little bit closer to Humberto Eco.

At the time of writing this article, who wins, the historian or the journalist?

When writing, I think the historian is superior to the journalist to begin with because one of the phases I find most enjoyable in writing fiction is precisely the research phase. However, in a novel you always need the journalist’s motivation because it’s more lively, but the final reflection or final conclusion of the person who’s got all the information and reached his conclusion, which is the historian, is a much more boring character, the journalist’s character is much more interesting than the historian’s character usually is.

Does journalism have real writers? Do you keep them? Does he encourage them?

There has always been the best thing that could happen to journalism and writers. Today’s journalism does not always have a special linguistic quality. But when he’s a writer, even when he’s talking about a topic that doesn’t interest you at all, it’s a pleasure to read how he writes things. This is essential. Then there are the two sides, the side of the journalist who wants to approach writing, which sees it as perfectly legal and normal, and the side of the writer who likes to approach journalism, thinking short and direct, which also achieves a lot for them. I think it needs to continue to exist, and in fact I feel like there is less than it should be. If I had a newspaper, I would fill it with columns written by writers.