Vargas Llosa leaves the Pen Club with a bang for its support to the "coup d'état of the independentists"

The novelist, president emeritus of the association, reproaches its statement full of "lies and slander."

The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa has sent a letter to Jennifer Clement, president of Pen International, the association of writers that defends freedom of expression, who leaves the club in protest at its statement "full of lies and slander" that the Pen disseminated "Regarding the attempted coup d'etat of the Catalan separatists of December 6 and 7 and October 1, 2017."

Vargas Llosa criticizes Clement that her organization has been carried away by its Catalan chapter, which he describes as a "militant organism of the independence movement" and that presents Spain "as a country that runs over freedom of expression and imprisons writers and dissidents" .

Next, the author defends that imprisoned prisoners "are not for what they believe and defend but for having been an active part of an attempted coup that, contrary to the Constitution and the laws of Spanish democracy, claimed an arbitrary and unconsulting secession ".

Vargas Llosa was president of the Pen Club between 1977 and 1980 and until now has been president emeritus. The Pen (whose name means Poets, Essayists and Novelists) was founded in London in 1921 as a lobby to defend freedom of the press and printing. Among its functions is to measure and denounce the repression suffered by journalists and intellectuals to develop their work.

The Pen Club statement that provoked the anger of Vargas Llosa urges the Spanish authorities to immediately release Jordi Sánchez and Jordi Cuixart and is subscribed by 14 PEN centers of the 148 that exist. In addition, five writers personally subscribe to the text: the Angolan José Eduardo Agualusa, the Italian Erri de Luca, the Spanish Suso de Toro, the Irish Colm Tóibín and the American Mary Ann Newman, translator of the Catalan, coordinator of the Institut Llull and Creu de Sant Jordi.

https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/literatura/2019/01/22/5c47249bfc6c83b3358b45a7.html

Full text of Mario Vargas Llosa’s resignation letter from PEN Club International

SPANISH

https://www.abc.es/cultura/abci-carta-integra-renuncia-mario-vargas-llosa-club-internacional-201901222002_noticia.html#ns_campaign=rrss-inducido&ns_mchannel=abc-es&ns_source=wh&ns_linkname=noticia-foto&ns_fee=0

ENGLISH:

https://voicesfromspain.com/2019/01/25/full-text-of-mario-vargas-llosas-resignation-letter-from-pen-club-international/

FRENCH

https://voicesfromspain.com/2019/01/25/4747/

CONSULT ALSO: 

Communique of Mario VARGAS LLOSA
The Tribune - EL PAIS
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/01/18/opinion/1547836614_242800.html

The half truths 

The Catalan separatists have freedom in Spain to express their ideas and convictions. What they can not do is transgress the law and commit a coup d'état, which is what 1-O tried to do