Of the three decades that contemplate the pages of our newspaper I only missed a year and a half. The first 10 were of intense Journalism in the last corner of Europe where a terrorist organization put on the table its huge arsenal of war against freedom of expression, pointing as a priority objective to the Press not related to nationalism.

Not only pointed. He threatened the professionals who did not give up, especially those who did not shake their legs when the ax and snake symbol landed like a sinister halo on their heads.

ETA activated as never before his propaganda apparatus to discredit those he called txakurrak (dogs, equating them to police and civil guards) with the pen . He sought to make his parish of Herri Batasuna and his constellation of satellites ill in order to create the most appropriate social climate to carry out his mission: to subdue, or failing to exterminate, his most uncomfortable enemy.

It put unambiguously in the spotlight those who "exercised their oppressive labor under the excuse of freedom of expression." Of course, also to the EL MUNDO professionals who worked in the front line, to the wayward we did not just resign ourselves to enter as a flock in the fold, already filled with trained, silent, cowardly, anesthetized lambs, many of them surrendered to Stockholm syndrome.

That fold of shame for Free Journalism represented one of the great spoils obtained by ETA for the benefit of its cause, an imaginary refugee camp that housed a large number of professionals in the security zone who preferred to sacrifice part of their freedom in return of immunity, of feeling safe.

The rest, integrated under headers to which ETA considered collaborators with the oppressing State of Euskal Herria, was exposed to the consequences of exercising the most dangerous trade in the world amid the fire at the discretion of the battlefield.

And what if he had them. Never before had names of journalists in the center of hundreds of thousands of targets been stamped on the walls of a European democratic country, some of them on the facades of their own houses, as pre-inscription inscriptions that appeared overnight before The frightened eyes of their families.

It was only the preamble of the escalation of hate that the Abertzale left unleashed against the media of the resistance and that in 2000 it had its annus horribilis , with the murder of José Luis López de Lacalle as a tragic climax to the horror we lived in those dates.

THE WORLD paid for the first time with the blood of one of its own its defense of freedom of expression, of brave and committed Journalism in the most adverse conditions, such as those that occurred in the Basque Country at that time of threat and widespread violence . As he would pay later when Julio Fuentes and Julio Anguita Parrado fell, under the bullets of a Taliban ambush, the first; the second, victim of shrapnel from a bombing at the gates of Baghdad.

A newspaper that has paid such a high price as a standard bearer of Journalism with capital letters, which has remained faithful to its foundational principles in defense of information and truth, has earned and deservedly the respect of its readers and society as a whole Spanish, which puts the safeguard of individual and collective rights before the legitimate ideological discrepancies of a democracy as plural as ours.

THE WORLD has brought the maxim of George Orwell to the last consequences , as simple as it is flat : "Journalism is publishing what someone does not want you to publish. Everything else is public relations." And he has done so since the firm conviction that, in the words of Albert Camus , "a free press can be good or bad, but without freedom, the press will be nothing but bad."

I could mention dozens, hundreds of exceptional names that throughout these 30 years have gone through this Drafting that today is, without a doubt, depositary and worthy continuator of that valuable inheritance . Both share the dominant DNA of EL MUNDO, where there is no room for betrayal, meanness and cowardice, which has chiseled the identity and fighting spirit of this newspaper's professionals since its origins: indomitable, courageous journalists, Unbearable, exemplary, bright, loyal, unconditionally delivered to the cause of a unique and unrepeatable project .

THE WORLD needs more than ever to cling to the values ​​of that Drafting that is not resigned or kneels, refractory to courtship and the pressures of power, always lends itself to overcoming any kind of threat against its integrity.

For those who are, for those who left, THE WORLD must take full advantage of its vigorous 30 years, full of lights, of great flashes of free, critical and independent Journalism, to respond strongly to the demanding challenges that form part of your road map.

Aurelio Fernández is general director of Publications of Editorial Unit and was director of EL MUNDO in the Basque Country until 2000.

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