THE WORLD Madrid
Madrid
Updated Tuesday, January 23, 2024-14:15
Culture El País bids farewell to Fernando Savater, illustrious founder of the newspaper
The interview with the controversial Fernando Savater: "Today everyone wants to be a victim and have their showcase"
"At certain ages, the doors that close leave a bit of melancholy. It has been almost 50 years, many dear people, many memories," this is how
Fernando Savater
feels less than 24 hours after the newspaper
El País
said goodbye to him
.
The philosopher, who had been writing uninterruptedly for 47 years in the pages of the Prisa group's newspaper, was fired this Monday hours after the interview with Savater was published in EL MUNDO.
The interview, signed by
Maite Rico
, contained some critical responses from the interviewee about his relationship with the historic newspaper.
Even with the body of the crime hot,
Fernando Savater
explained to this newspaper that this Monday afternoon he received a "cordial" call from the director of
El País
,
Pepa Bueno
.
"Pepa told me that she had read me since I was little: of course, I wrote in
El País
in number zero! And well, I couldn't continue because we had divergent lines and I don't like what they do," the philosopher explained.
Interview
Ideas.
Fernando Savater: "Today everyone wants to be a victim and have their showcase"
Editor: MAITE RICO
Editorial: PHOTOGRAPHS: ALBERTO DI LOLLI
Fernando Savater: "Today everyone wants to be a victim and have their showcase"
According to
Savater
, "what they do" he does not like "nor do many others who remain silent."
"But I have always said it openly,
I do not hide, I do not go behind
. I was inside, on a different line, but discussing ideas from within," stated the intellectual.
During the interview with Maite Rico, published in the supplement
Papel
,
Savater
, among many other things, answers the question of whether over time he had distanced himself from
El País,
or
El País
from him, due to his ideological evolution, which "I believe that the newspaper has changed a lot, from having been a critical, plural newspaper, to becoming an openly government medium", although he later adds that he himself has also changed.
The conversation continues with this question: "It signals a
point of bankruptcy in
El País
with the arrival to power of Pedro Sánchez
and the immediate
purge of the management team,
which had been critical of him and firm against the 2017 coup. It gives the impression of that
El País
and the PSOE have followed a parallel process".
Savater
's extensive response
criticized the loss of independence compared to previous stages, even talking about the recently deceased Miguel Barroso, who worked part of his career at
El País
and also worked for a socialist government.
In this sense and after the dismissal,
Savater
also insisted in an interview in Cope that "
El País
was center-left, but critical, and it has been turning."
"It is not a more progressive newspaper, but a more pro-government newspaper, which is not the same thing," he stated.
Furthermore, as he already said in the interview,
he prefers "to go the other way than to say what everyone wants to hear
. "
At the end of the interview, Maite Rico asked him why he was still in the Prisa group's newspaper if "his articles are sometimes responded to immediately by other columnists, with letters to the editor...".
To which the philosopher responded: "It doesn't matter to me to write against. It's more fun for me to write against the prejudices that my readers have than to run my hand over their spines. The letters don't bother me. Man, if anything, What bothers me is that the newspaper itself becomes a replica of my column. But I have made
Jean Cocteau's motto my own:
disapproval exalts me. I have lost the most beloved personal references that I had in the newspaper, such as
Javier Pradera But
I know everyone. At this moment there is no one who writes in
El País
older than me. That's why when they tell me: "What you write is annoying," I understand it, but if someone feels bothered, let it go, because I was there first for sure (laughs). I have dedicated many hours of my life to that newspaper. I made that newspaper. In other words, people bought the newspaper, among other things, because I wrote, not because it was Miguel Barroso".
In the end, when the journalist tells him that he is left alone with
Félix de Azúa
as a discordant voice in
El País,
Savater concludes with a laugh that they are "the last of the Mohicans."