Juan Pedro Quiñonero: "If Pla had written in French, he would not only be a Nobel laureate, but a global authority."

BarcelonaDegà from the European press to Paris, Juan Pedro Quiñonero is a rare bird It is difficult to understand what you have seen in the newspapers you have visited for more than 40 years. In this interview, he recounts the glories and miseries of the correspondents' lives, some indiscreet phrases from Felipe González and his vision of Europe from the Parisian perspective that allows for a view from both perspectives.

The diary ABC He has dispensed with you after defending the use of the "extreme draught" qualification, against the criteria of the director of the mitjà. Why is this term so uncomfortable?

— It will surprise you, because the only thing I can do is open the book to see that it does not have a particular position on the extreme right, but rather it limits itself to confirming a process and a historical evolution.

In any case, do I think that part of the discomfort is that admitting that there have been extremes towards Europe in some way forces us to admit that they have also not affected Spain?

— Això del trumpisme and the extremes dretes is evidence throughout Europe. The one who is passing to Spain is exactly the one who has passed to France in the last vint or thirty years. In 1995 Le Pen's extreme right became the first worker party in France, and in the last elections 63% of French workers and farmers voted for the extreme right. It's easy to think that anyone who has passed through Extremadura and Aragó goes this way. The tendency to make up the extreme dret with other qualificatius is evident. I arrived in Madrid, and ended up in some big newspaper in Barcelona.

Són gairebé five decades in France. They have dressed them in all colors.

— Jo hi arrived in 1977. Farts from me, to the newspaper Information They are going to decide to send me to Europe, to follow Adolfo Suárez, and I am going to continue with everyone who is coming. In the case of Felipe González, for example, he recalled how the Unió de l'Esquerra, which brought together socialists and communists, was going to come to power in France. The question was obvious: what did he think fer davant d'això? Doncs bé, m'agafa pel braç i em diu: "Quiñonero, to me the only communists who interest me are the dead communists." Doncs bé, from here the extreme dretes have not deixat de créixer and the esquerres have enfonsat the soles. In France, socialists, communists and ecologists have fewer voters and deputies than Le Pen's extreme right. I can imagine that, in Spain, President Sánchez and the rebels will end up having fewer votes than Abascal.

How do you see Europe from Paris?

— Paris is a magnificent place because it allows me to understand what the Germans, the Spaniards, the Italians, the Angles think... In the past, the Franco-German Empire was a pillar of the political construction of Europe, but it has become confused and has antagonistic perspectives, which I don't know if it's true. so clearly to Spain. And the lloc d'Espanya has remained diluted, clear.

Is there espai for a real union, beyond the coincidence of concrete interests and sovint circumstances?

— European politics and civilization have undergone a change to blackness, leading to an uncertain future. In Germany, which has remained a pillar of European construction, the extreme right has more power than the Social Democratic Party. It is a political tragedy for which there has been no precedent since Hitler. In France, the extreme direction is the most popular leaders and the best voting perspectives. The perspectives are black.

He began to work as a correspondent imitating the BBC but in the book he wrote: "So much acid equanimitat is going to end up tiring to those who pay me."

— Fa segles, jo treballava a la SER, and as guanyava un bon sou, vaig dir: m'he d'invent something, perquè, if the comptable calculates what I do and what I charge, em faran fora. I am going to invent a European press magazine. The thing will work so that the people responsible for donating, first Iñaki Gabilondo and then Luis del Olmo, do not agree with the proposals of the Financial Times or of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, i aleshores, in comptes de donar-me pas en directe, ho graveven. If you don't like them, you won't pass.

Is being a correspondent easier after five years?

— The correspondent's reputation has fallen dramatically. Fa segles, Tomàs Alcoverro, emeritus correspondent of The Vanguard to the Orient Mitjà i jo guanyàvem, roughly speaking, one thousand dollars at the time, which could be around 4,000 euros. Today, practically all correspondents of different sexes or political affiliations charge both the chronicle: 100 euros, 120, 150 both. To pay a convertible to Paris from 150 to 150 euros, you have to work hell, and from there an absolute precariousness is derived, and for this reason the correspondent has to submit to the dictat. I, així, from Madrid tell whoever thinks what to say. When I talk about Madrid I also talk about Barcelona.

What is the economy of lack of culture that you talk about recurrently in the book?

— Abans, both to write in the newspapers and to have a public life as well as having a minimum of culture. When I came to Barcelona, ​​which is only home to Spain, the first two days I made the mistake of seeing some gatherings. I am horrified by the level of disconnection of fears, by the level of ideological fanaticism. Everything is divided into white and black, left and right, and reality remains hidden, silent. One day, the director of the newspaper will say: I would be happy to suggest ideas. Jo li vaig will say that it would be a good idea to go around the street and photograph what happened. They are going to stop and they are going to say: "But, Quiño, are you there?" The career fa for.

What do we not understand about French from Spain?

— France goes through the greatest political crisis since the founding of the Fifth Republic. That is, from the extreme left to the extreme right, the identity of France does not pose any doubt. The problem in Spain is that people from Múrcia, Saragossa and Lleida do not know what Spain is and have totally different visions. To my free On the nonexistence of Spain I explain that, at least since 1640, the Spanish government has been able to integrate Basques and Catalans. I això is due to absolute ignorance and some devastating caïnites. To address this question, start with culture. I to Valladolid, Cartagena, Extremadura and Conca have to try to understand a story that was made by a gentleman, Ramon Llull, who wrote in Catalan and that is written in French and in Spanish, and that now is a reality that has not ceased to be believed and multiplied. A gairebé cap història d'Spanya subratlla l'specificitat, among others, Catalan; enlloc explains that Torres i Bages speaks of the Catalan nationality or that Joan Fuster, from Sueca, speaks of the Catalan Countries.

Macron, at the Conference of Ambassadors on August 27, 2019, explains this forecast. "Civilizations will disappear, countries will too. Europe will disappear." Hi, do you agree?

— I found out that Julien Green is going to tell me this, a home molt savi, fa anys. He was going to have the chance to attend one of the meetings that took place between all of his friends and he was going to show that France was hereby gone and that European nations were becoming threatened and Balkan countries, and that the future of Europe, in this sense, was uncertain. Let's just see what happens to Ukraine or what Donald Trump means. I see the president of the Community of Madrid defending it... who are barbarians who only contribute to destroying the fundamental concept of Europe.

And in remaining of the grandeur French, then?

— I don't think so. Tothom talks about the decline of France and Paris, but I walk along the passarel·la of the Pont de les Arts and I notice that many young people love coming here; I see, for example, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, another symbol of the French national crisis, which has carried feta pols since I don't know how many times. At the next reopening, Donald Trump is coming, not the Pope. Unfortunately, the country continues to have great attraction for tourists, despite the global crisis in which it is immersed. Today George Gershwin continues to be in force: in terms of music lyrics there are only two themes: love and Paris. Because Paris has something that Cartagena or Madrid doesn't.

Quins plans té per al futur?

— Vull fer a book of photographs that is digui Paris in color. Because the city has still been photographed a lot, but in black and white, which is a color that does not exist: Willy Ronis, Cartier-Bresson... I, related to the journalistic field, have sent 18,000 emails to editors and directors of newspapers proposing an overview of how the news of the day is seen in different European newspapers. Will I succeed? I have told the young lady that you are waiting for the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I have arrived that it is that I have exercised columnism because it is going to cause ostracism in both Madrid and Barcelona, ​​I imagine that for different and probably symmetrical reasons.

— Fa segles, quan l'ABC He was directed by Luis María Anson, who was not from the extreme left, he said: what seems to be if there is a cultural column, it is to be said, with a look at current events through high culture. The Paris of Mercè Rodoreda, of Pla, of Baroja. But neither Madrid nor Barcelona have anything to do with me. fucking case with this story. T'ho di ara que no se sentnú. I think it's unfortunate, because there has been some great director of The Vanguard which is going to start in journalism in Paris. Practically all the great writers have passed through Paris. And the city generates fascination: just as you see the horrifying quantity of French books that are published in Barcelona. Do not publish any German or Australian novels, but publish the latest nonsense from Parisian writers.

What can we learn from the country of Pla or Rodoreda for Paris, for example?

— I hope to defend, in 1973, that Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Yourcenar, Rosa Chacel and Mercè Rodoreda were the great European writers of the 20th century. Rodoreda has always remained esteemed for Catalonia and has remained the great Catalan writer, but the one who brought her to Paris is a great lady of continental, European stature. In the case of Pla, if you write in French you would not just be a Nobel Prize winner, you would be a planetary authority. He has written as much as Balzac and with the quality of the poet Lucreci. Catalonia in the 20th century is incomprehensible if you look at Pla's work. I això does not exist in French, in English or Spanish: a writer with this polyphonic force that explains how the pages are seen but who also portrays the history of Barcelona in the geography of the interwar period, when he wrote with analytical precision the six chronicles from Berlin or when he is in Rome narrating the rise of the feixisme. I agree that Meloni is not Mussolini, but he assists in the creation of the extreme right to Italy and helps us understand.