I told Larra that five old men in robes and fists, five so-called emulators of Ramón Pedrosa Andrade, had grossly insulted contemporary Spanish journalism. As? Without taking into account the testimonies of several colleagues who denied that it was the attorney general of the state who disclosed the e-mail in which a scoundrel confessed to his crimes
Last Sunday morning I went to relax for a while in front of the oil portrait of Mariano José de Larra signed by the painter José Gutiérrez de la Vega in 1835. It is in the Museum of Romanticism in Madrid, next to another of Dolores Armijo, the woman with whom Larra was madly in love and whose rejection led him to an absurd suicide for me, although very typical of the time, remember that of young Werther in the novel by Goethe.
I went to see Larra because I consider him the first great master of Spanish journalism. His articles went beyond the froth of the days, the gossip and gossip of the moment, and, as they were ingenious, well-founded and beautifully written, they can be read with benefit and pleasure nearly two centuries after their first publication. I have always thought that in addition to denouncing the outrages of its time, written journalism should aspire to be a literary genre. Larra highlighted the path of excellence that other greats of our journalism would follow: Julio Camba, González-Ruano, Josep Pla, Francisco Umbral, Manuel Vicent, Maruja Torres…
At the Museum of Romanticism, I mentally told Maestro Larra that his work continues to have enormous value, I informed him that, in other guises, of course, the Spain he denounced is still very much alive. That of crookedness and corruption, that of absenteeism and inefficiency, that of authoritarianism and arbitrariness, that of intolerance and casticism. And I added that what he wrote in the first third of the 19th century is still relevant today: “To write in Madrid is to cry.”
Very recently, I told him, five old men in togas, five so-called emulators of Ramón Pedrosa Andrade, grossly insulted contemporary Spanish journalism. As? Without taking into account the testimonies of several colleagues who, under oath, denied that it was the state attorney general who disclosed the email in which a scoundrel confessed to his crimes. I informed Larra that this scoundrel had made a lot of money by taking care of masks during a pandemic – you could call it a plague, professor – and not paying the corresponding fees. This thug, I continued, is the bedfellow of the president of the Community of Madrid, a pimp who reigns supreme in the City and at the Court.
I felt like Larra didn’t quite understand the mess, so I gave her what we call today a little context. These five magistrates are members of what we could call the Toga Nostra: they are in the Supreme Court for having faithfully served throughout their careers the current Spanish right, led by the aforementioned president of the Madrid region. To understand us, professor, this right would be equivalent to what the absolutists were in your time.
On the contrary, the attorney general who was tried by the Supreme Court was on the side of what you called the liberals. Yes, he was doomed in advance by the dresses. Like José María Torrijos, Rafael del Riego and Mariana Pineda in your time. Do not be afraid, professor, the death penalty no longer exists in Spain, to the extent that at least we have made progress. The penalties now include neither hanging, nor the firing squad, nor the ignoble garrote.
I explained to Larra that now many journalists are calling polarization to what the two Spains have always been: one, the liberal, the secular, the progressive; another, the absolutist, the clerical, the reactionary. One, that of Riego’s cry; another, that of Long live the chains! Although these days I informed him, the second one likes to be called liberal, neoliberal or until libertarian, because few people today dare to express themselves explicitly against freedom. For now, at least.
The first of the two Spains, I continued, has governed our beloved homeland less than the second over the last two hundred years. And when he did, he was always under the threat of being expelled by force, yesterday by force, today by the courts. So much so that when announcing his resignation, the first leader of today’s democracy, a certain Suárez, admitted: “I do not want the democratic system of coexistence to be, once again, a parenthesis in the history of Spain.” Spaniards who did not experience this moment can now learn more in a television series called Anatomy of a moment.
I did not try to explain to Maestro Larra what television is: a group of visitors entered the room with the portraits of Larra and Dolores Armijo from the Museum of Romanticism and it would have been uncivil not to give them space to contemplate them up close. I therefore only added by way of farewell that there is no longer any prior censorship of journalistic texts, but that there are few newspapers that dare to publish information or opinions contrary to eternal black Spain. To write in Madrid, in all of Spain one could say, is to cry again. And I stressed to him that there persists among the leaders of our country a proud contempt for the testimony that journalists who are not of their rank can provide, even though their independence and professionalism are no longer in doubt. The five crooks from the Supreme Court just said it.
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