“Thank you very much for the path you have taken up to this point, good luck and see you always,” concludes the note that the director of the Spanish newspaper
El País
, Pepa Bueno, sent to the
philosopher and writer Fernando Savater
to confirm what she had anticipated by telephone. : that the diary
He would no longer publish his weekly column and that he was cut off from El País due to his criticism of the publication.
This Friday, in
a newsletter addressed to the newspaper's readers
, Bueno clarifies why on Saturday there will be no column by Savater, a pen that was read in El País for almost fifty years: “For some time, it was evident that
our author was not comfortable with the newspaper
, something that we knew from its columns and its public statements - explains Bueno -.
He never came home to comment on it
.”
“On Monday he expressed it in two outside media in
intolerable terms
of personal contempt for El País, its credibility, its management, its journalists and its collaborators.
It was clear to me that
it was the end of the journey
,” adds the director in her message.
Savater gave interviews to the newspaper El Mundo and the online newspaper El Confidencial as part of the promotion of his latest book, Carne governada, where he compiles his intellectual memoirs and which has been in bookstores since Wednesday, January 24.
The journalist Pepa Bueno.
Photo: EFE/Javier Blasco
“From being a progressive, center-left newspaper, with the virtues and defects of the case, it became a
government spokesperson and the worst Government
that Spanish democracy has had since the death of the dictator,” says Savater about El País in page 129 of Governed Flesh.
“This naturally undermined the prestige of the newspaper, which went from being the newspaper of reference to becoming a
laughable epitome of the press
at the service of politics,” he continued.
These opinions were confirmed and deepened in the interviews that the philosopher gave.
The director of El País called him by phone that same Monday
to inform him that he had been fired.
“I know there were reasons for me to be fired, I know that.
But I didn't think it would happen
.
“I always hoped there would be a twist,” Savater told El Confidencial.
“We talked for a while in a friendly tone,” the philosopher clarified about his conversation with Pepa Bueno.
Fernando Savater at the door of the Colón theater, during a visit to Buenos Aires.
Photo: Guillermo Rodriguez Adami
“There are 50 years of my life that I leave behind.
But you have to assume that when you get old you are constantly closing doors, and this is a door that closes,” she said.
Clarín
tried to contact the management of El País but there was no response.
Ideas that generated controversy
This Friday, Pepa Bueno, headed her newsletter to El País readers with the topic.
There
he gave the reasons
why he decided to fire Savater: “In all this time, the newspaper has punctually published his opinions on the most diverse topics, accompanying the evolution of the philosopher's thought and also his style,” says Bueno.
Even when his ideas generated great controversy with many of you and with our own journalists, such as, for example, the occasion in which
he trivialized the abuses within the Church
.
And he assures: “I have defended it, until last Monday, because I am concerned about
a society that is losing tolerance for discrepancy
, including that which causes us pain or rejection.
It is not necessary to argue the plurality of opinions in El País, just read us.”
“It is
an important gap
because Savater has published in our pages for more than four decades, and was one of the builders of the civic consciousness of a couple of generations of Spaniards.
Also mine,” confesses the director of El País.
“Opinion columns
are not leased spaces for life
in a newspaper,” says Bueno.
They are a living space through which collaborators come and go over time.”
And he announced that
Argentine Leila Guerriero,
already a contributor to El País, will start publishing her column on Saturdays.