Yesterday we celebrated Constitution Day because many Spaniards at the time were doing something as simple and easy as counting to three. The most difficult thing is that they knew how to do it at the right time and within themselves, even if around them … The opportunities that would justify not doing so would multiply and perhaps tighten our fists in our pockets. Many of those who came before me, and I do not forget, remained silent, observed and counted to three. Time has proven them right, and not those who, carried away by the surrounding atmosphere of tension or baseness, or in a hurry not to take the time to reflect, have sullied the book of history with words that should not have been spoken.
I did not live through this era, but I know that it is to this stage that we owe our democratic guarantee of today, which is why I feel that I have the duty of gratitude and the possibility of following the example. How often do we stop and decide to count to three. We keep our mouths, we chew our desire, we sigh and we continue; although inside, perhaps, we repeated three words on the occasion of each number: “This is how far he has come.” This is what in language does not consist of saying something but of doing something, what in linguistics is called a performative act.
I admit my contradiction: someone who makes a living from language praises something as unlinguistic as counting to three introspectively. Raised among the noises of the distaffs, I know that prudence is not to muffle the ringing or to ring the bells loudly but rather to ring when it is necessary, with the imposed rhythm and with the touch which corresponds to each time. And my touch, in this time, ends in diminuendo.
The books say that the number three is perfect, magical. I don’t believe in esotericism, I have no lucky numbers or interest in numerology, I’m verbal up and down, very little arithmetic. My quirks, you can imagine, are linguistic; My dedication is the word given and my faith is the honesty of others. But I know that I live at a ternary rhythm: I feel that the stories in three parts hook me, I collect the sentences of others made of triple parallelisms (what the books call tricolon: “I arrived, I saw, I conquered”, resolved Caesar, “islands, palaces, towers” said Pedro Salinas). And I travel around Seville counting to three: the three human figures of our shield (Fernando III, Saint Isidore and Saint Leander), the three metal arches of the Triana Bridge, the three sections of the Giralda (the Almohad, the Renaissance and the all-seeing weathervane). I evoke the three female figures at the Bécquer roundabout and note their three emotional states: knowing the present without forgetting the past and letting the future place things by counting to three.
I don’t know in which direction a city like Seville lives. For some it will be the pre-electoral compass with its dirty knives, for others the compass of liturgical time or that imposed by the sports season. I know my score now marks a measure of silence. On the eve of this new Christmas, the street lights agreed to make me count (one, two and three) to show me which lights had to be turned on and turned on without fail: those of the house and the family. I look at these lights while I shake the ink from this Sevillian and monthly pen that I had the honor of being able to use so that you could read to me for three years. Our compatriot Nebrija said that the period of three days was a tresedial, the period of three nights was called tresnochal and he called the period of three years (a transparent and beautiful word) tresañanal. Whoever signs this closes a three-year period that began in January 2023 and bids a grateful farewell to ABC, the three-letter newspaper.
Cycles come to an end and this stage, chosen calmly, is part of the job of being in the press. It was a great three years. I decided to always write with Seville or Sevillian in the title and I think I have fulfilled it, also in this farewell. You will find me in Seville, face to face and trying to be honest, writing, reading or teaching. I say goodbye to you by thanking you for your silent company, who have read these lines published before mine. My house of words is called Seville: three syllables, as many as the ancient Roman toponym of Híspalis, the Andalusian of Isbilya or the names “transition” and “prudence”. Neither bisyllables nor polysyllables, I like these words which have three parts, as if they contained the right middle.