ENGLISH
Javier Cercas Mena (Ibahernando, Cáceres, Spain, 1962) is a novelist, translator, and journalist holding a Bachelor´s degree in Spanish philology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. As a journalist he publishes regularly in El Pais since 1999. One of his most notorious novels is “Soldiers of Salamina” (2001), translated into more than 20 languages and taken to the cinema by director David Trueba in 2003.
In facing the Catalan crisis, the Spanish government was incapable of understanding that nowadays, the media doesn´t limit itself to reflecting reality; it shapes it.
IT HAPPENNED RIGHT AFTER September 6 and 7, 2017 when the separatist majority in (the Catalan) parliament de facto derogated the Catalan self-government constitution (the “Estatut”) without any legitimation for doing so as it violated the (Spanish) Constitution for the Nth time rebelling against the democratic state, placing Catalonia in the correct path to civil confrontation and economic ruin.
I received a call one day from the veteran correspondent of one of the most important European weekly magazines who asked me to write an article on what was happening in Catalonia. I replied that I couldn´t because I was busy writing a novel. “Look”, the journalist responded; “I was recently on vacation and my magazine sent a colleague to Catalonia who knows nothing about Catalonia or Spain and who does not even speak Spanish. He tried to speak with the Rajoy government but no one wanted to talk to him; instead he did manage to speak to Puigdemont, to Junqueras, to Romeva and I don´t know to who else. You can imagine the sort of article we ended up publishing”.
She paused and concluded: “Either you all get your acts together or the liars will get away with everything they want, just as with Brexit. It´s your call”.
I decided to get my act together. I didn´t do it only because I think it´s a bad idea that Catalonia break away from Spain, and not even because the Catalan government was trying to take away fundamental rights – starting with the most fundamental of all rights; the right to citizenship -, but because of respect for the truth. So, during the following two months of nightmare I dropped my novel and dedicated myself exclusively to writing in international publications and to answering questions from journalists worldwide, becoming busy day and night at uncovering the lies that separatism was spreading with great success, using the money of all Catalans and the appreciated help from Vladimir Putin: namely that Franco had not died, that Spain is not a democracy, that it was all about a struggle between Catalonia and Spain given that all or almost all Catalans favor secession, that Spain robs Catalonia, that Catalan culture is oppressed, that the Catalan language is persecuted, that the October 1st referendum was a true referendum and that on the following day Catalan hospitals had collapsed due to the number of wounded, that Catalonia had been independent until 1714, and that the Civil War had been a war between Catalonia and Spain, etz. etz. etz.
Of course foreign correspondents in Spain knew all of that was a load of lies, and except for those who thought it was more beneficial to spread a sheer romantic lie, instead of a complex and prosaic truth, given the first is easier to tell and to sell, they did not publish such lies.
However I can assure you that a recently arrived journalist from Sweden or Canada, who does not speak Spanish nor Catalan and has had little time to brief himself, could swallow the whole thing and a lot more, and will tell it just like that to his/her readers.
What was the Spanish government doing during the whole time? The answer is easy: nothing. Made up of old-fashioned civil servants, the government obtusely believed that in order to overcome the Catalan crisis, it was more than enough to have Obama, Merkel and Juncker on its side, and was hence incapable of coming to understand that nowadays, the media not only reflects reality but shapes it and that without it, any battle is lost.
Once such tragic days were over, I recriminated to a Spanish diplomat the passiveness of its profession and of the state in general. “You´ll see”, he excused himself by responding: “We are seen as partisan and therefore no one would believe our version even if we told the truth. Whereas you common citizens carry more authority”. So in a nutshell; whereas the Catalan government was busy spending millions in lie-telling, the Spanish government wasn´t even spending time in uncovering them, delegating the job in any passing-by citizen to whom a journalist would be willing to extend a microphone. Just like myself. Crazy, but true.
ESPAÑOL
Javier Cercas Mena (Ibahernando, Cáceres, 1962) es escritor, traductor, periodista y licenciado en Filología Hispánica por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Su primera obra publicada en 1987 —cuando obtiene plaza como lector de español en la Universidad de Illinois— se denomina 'El móvil', por la que recibe una buena acogida por parte de la crítica. En su vertiente periodística, es colaborador habitual de EL PAÍS desde 1999. Sus artículos se reúnen en varias publicaciones como 'Una buena temporada' (1998) o 'Relatos reales' (2000), entre otras. Una de sus obras más afamadas fue 'Soldados de Salamina' (2001), que se tradujo a más de 20 idiomas y fue llevada al cine por el director David Trueba en 2003. Por la obra 'Anatomía de un instante' fue galardonado con el Premio Terenci Moix de Ensayo y el Premio Nacional de Narrativa en 2009.
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