-Pedro, is there really open bar?

What Raul del Pozo really cared about Monday afternoon at Teatro Barceló was if he could have a free drink with friends who had come to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his novel Tahúres Night , which now rescues Berenice. Pedro was Pedro Trapote, intimate of the journalist and owner of the premises. And next to him, in the front row, some of his praetorian guard: José María García, Carmen Rigalt, General Sanz Roldán ...

" Night of tahúres I wrote it in the monastery of Paular, where I became friends with all the friars . My cousin took me. Madrid is the most mocking city in the world," Raúl del Pozo said before more than 200 faithful between grateful and overwhelmed. "This novel is resistant to death, treats the game as a passion not as a disease. With this book I gave a sable, I signed four more novels. Cela told me 'take the money to the publishers, who only give you the advance'."

Noche de Tahúres is an acid and real portrait of the world of underworld, of the vertigo of burle. In the first sentence there is already a murder that will investigate a parakeet (inexperienced police) and a veteran, the Elder, who "lives alone, surrounded by cockroaches, sleeps little" and always walks near a VIP, where he drinks and reads the press for The night of the next day. It's another era, the Madrid of the 90s.

From left on the right, Carmen Rigalt, Pilar Goya, Ana Rosa Quintana, Antonio Fernández-Galiano, General Sanz Roldán, Cayetano Martínez de Irujo, Pedro Trapote, José María García, on Monday at the Barceló Theater in Madrid.Angel Navarrete

"Luck - Blasphemous sentence - is a whore who always goes with them (...) Money pursues the richest, who is least excited to win or lose. They fool the fools, the drunk , the new, the ignorant and the experts, the calculators err. " This is said by Blasfemo, Blasfemo de Aranjuez, who is not an invented character, but exists, like almost all the burlangas that appear in the book, said Del Pozo. As Cabezón de Elche.

Night of Tahú flutters over who could kill "a Moor who had been a snitch and smuggler, a small-scale spy, a lender, a boxer and who was several times in the fan (the jail)." It is the best of the book . The characters, what they say, how they say it. Raúl in these lides is unbeatable . "I have been an ear thief," he acknowledged. "I heard in the mountains of Cuenca the purest Castilian and where I have learned the most has been in the cars of the gangs of the bullfighters, with people like Bojilla . " The night, the ecstasy of when the ball falls or not in the number that has been bet, "you owe me 100,000 pesetas and I do not care if you pay me now or in five minutes," police officers expelled from the Corps for ludopaths and who are readmitted on the condition that they kill the burlangas ...

Noche de tahúres has a prologue by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a friend of Raúl since the time of the Pueblo newspaper, as the academic recalled, that factory of journalists like lynx, whiskey on the table and playing cards at the close. "This book is part of Raul's life. From that life Raul filled his pockets with characters and words. This book is a formidable catalog of the underworld rooted in the classic picaresque Golden Age , a dazzling display of some of the many audacity that a language like Spanish makes possible, "writes Pérez-Reverte.

The epilogue is borne by Antonio Lucas, who drew up a human and literary profile of the teacher: "Raúl is superstitious like gypsies and suspects flattery like Buddhists . Raúl is a friendship that I inherited from my parents. Raúl's language is hard , sour, tactile, sharp and, at the same time, perfectly equipped with emotion and vertigo. Approaching Raúl is doing several journalism courses in a while. Going back to this book is to recover a gallop that never ends, "said Antonio Lucas , "the prince of the poets", as he was baptized by Raul himself years ago.

Among Raúl's fans were Antonio Fernández-Galiano, president of Editorial Unit, Cayetano Martínez de Irujo and also Ana Rosa Quintana, Antonio Casado, former Pimentel Minister (as editor of the publishing house), Edu Galán and Marta Flich, Jesús F. Úbeda, Jesús Ruiz Mantilla, Pilar Goya, widow of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, and the journalist Lara Siscar ... And Raúl, embarrassed by the praise, stitched this and that: " Today we write with less freedom than in 2004, the left is seduced by climate change, we have a crazy Parliament, what happens in Spain is very serious, Madrid is the capital of glory, the last resistant ... Well, the show is over and the open bar begins. " And it started.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • literature
  • culture
  • Journalism

The Paper Sphere Anna Pacheco, shame of class in millennial code

The Paper SpherePilar Reyes: "Literature puts words to the dark areas"

The Sphere of Paper García Lorca, light in the labyrinth of his poetry