How was 'Babelia', the cultural supplement of EL PAÍS, born?

A Brazilian friend, who is a lover of

Babelia

, the cultural supplement of this newspaper, upon learning that I had been part of the group that created it in 1991, asked me why I didn't write a note about that initiative that could interest young journalists. from today.

I was then, 14 years ago, EL PAÍS correspondent in Italy.

When the young journalist Juan Luis Cebrián, after having founded EL PAÍS, left the direction of the newspaper and was replaced by Joaquín Estefanía, he asked me to return to Madrid.

He asked me very delicately during a walk through the mythical Venice.

Already in Madrid, Estefanía asked me to join the team that had been in charge of creating a cultural supplement that the newspaper was missing, in which the best signatures of the new democratic Spain were already writing.

The team of the new supplement was then directed by José Martí Font, who came to Madrid every week from Barcelona where he worked on the Catalan edition.

Juan Luis Cebrián, who was never satisfied that the new newspaper was not the best, complained that it did not yet have a solid Culture supplement.

Thus, he and the new director wanted me on the team for having spent so many years abroad.

Since the founding of the newspaper there was, in fact, a concern to give it a strong international content, given that Spain had been with its windows closed to the outside during the long years of the Franco dictatorship.

Hence Cebrián's idea of ​​opening the newspaper every day with the International section, unlike most newspapers at that time that opened with news from Spain.

I remember that the idea of ​​opening the newspaper with Internacional was praised at a world congress on journalism held in Rome when I was a correspondent.

Discussing the new cultural supplement with Cebrián and Estefanía, I advised them that the first thing was to find a creative title for it.

I reminded them that, for example, the newspaper suffered with its Sunday supplement because it was born without a name.

The important EL PAÍS Semanal, not having been baptized, was always called in a thousand ways, such as the colorín, the weekly, simply the Sunday supplement.

He never had his own name.

For the possible name it occurred to me that it could be called Babel.

Yes, like the Tower of Babel in Mesopotamia, cradle of the birth of writing.

It would be a fusion of ancient and modern.

My colleagues on the team thought the idea was good, except that when we tried to patent the name it already existed.

I was disappointed and told Manuel Vicent, who had a great idea.

Why not create a new word that evoked Babel?

For example,

Babelia

, which could be the region of Babel.

And it was he, who in the first issue that came out on October 19, 1991, wrote a beautiful presentation evoking that if the Tower of Babel had been built with bricks, the

Babelia

of EL PAÍS would be built every week with books and ideas of culture and of art.

So it was.

The first issues of

Babelia

were created at a weekly meal that the team, under the direction of Martí Font, had in a restaurant in Madrid where we discussed possible topics for the next issue.

The idea was that in addition to its cultural weight it would also have an air of modernity, touching on even curious topics such as an issue that we dedicated to fat people, a topic that was then fashionable in the foreign press.

I remember that Jesús Polanco found it very funny then.

The day

Babelia

celebrated its hundredth publication, it occurred to me that we should do something special.

I proposed dedicating the entire supplement to the topic of “happiness.”

It was accepted and we thought of looking for a hundred people from various categories to write ten lines about what the concept of happiness meant to them.

Even Juan Luis Cebrián participated.

I am a bad collector and I lost the copy that I kept for many years.

Here in Brazil, the newspaper was published in print for a time in São Paulo and was also distributed in Rio de Janeiro.

EL PAÍS was then seen by Brazilian progressives as a kind of

Le Monde

in Spanish.

The experience, however, was short-lived because the edition was too expensive.

What I do remember is that many people told me that they bought it especially the day I was taking the

Babelia

supplement .

Today it is a pride to see that, not only in Spanish-speaking countries, but also in many others, that new cultural supplement of the newspaper, despite all its digital transformations, continues to be sought after, praised and cited 33 years after its birth. even with affection.

Which is no small thing in the midst of the crisis and the attacks today, even here in Brazil, against the traditional press which, with all its crises, continues to be the best bulwark against the serious global threat to the values ​​of democracy.

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