A correspondent is a meteorologist, a processor of the crowds from which he has to extract a dynamic and, from that dynamic, a projection, which is more guidance than prediction. Enric Juliana (Badalona, ??1957) likes to see himself as a cartographer, although his thing has never been to draw maps, but to paint on them the isobars of convulsion and calm. Of the noise and the calm. This physical and human cartography brings together the deputy director and delegate of La Vanguardia in Madrid in Spain: the pact and the fury (Arpa Editores), presented this Monday in the capital under the auspices of two other journalists who know him well: Jordi Juan, director of La Vanguardia and Juliana’s companion “for thirty years”, as he himself stressed, and Pepa Bueno, director of El País, with whom the author has shared hours and debates in Hoy por hoy and Hora 25 of the Cadena Ser. Before them, the main hall of Espacio Larra – the former Madrid headquarters of the weekly Nuevo Mundo and later of newspapers such as El Sol, Arriba, Marca or the Madrid newspaper – is packed to the brim with colleagues and authorities, headed by the minister. of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños.
In July, a sequel to Twister (1996), by Jan de Bont, is released, one of the best disaster films of all time – perhaps the most successful and fun, next to The Day After Tomorrow (2004), by Roland Emmerich – which narrates the adventures of some meteorologists led by Bill Harding (Bill Paxton) who try to introduce their analysis instruments inside a tornado to understand its dynamics and save lives, if possible, without losing their own. This is how the correspondent operates, and in the midst of a whirlwind Enric Juliana arrived in Madrid, 20 years ago in April, for the investiture session of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, when the country was trying to heal the wounds of the March 11 attacks and journalism. capital city debuted the use of five-column mendacity as a political weapon. That proximity that is actually the distance of the correspondent, as Jordi Juan highlighted, characterized by “respect and temperance” in writing and by “sagacity, intuition and reflection”, distinctive – he explained and Juliana confirmed – of the head of the Godó Group. “One is a firm,” said the author, “but it is in a professional framework, a framework that is also a historical tradition,” he stressed, alluding to the 143 years that La Vanguardia has just completed, all of them under the same ownership. It was one of the three thanks that the author made in the solemnity of a work that has the intention of closure or review. The other two were for her partner, also a journalist – “without her, I would end up getting lost because I have a certain tendency to fly” –, and for the city of Madrid. For this one, he carefully chose the formula: “I want to express my respects to the city of Madrid.” A whirlwind in which he needed guidance: “Two months after arriving I realized that I didn’t know anything,” and there the advice of veterans such as the journalist Mariano Guindal, the former delegate of the Generalitat, Santiago de Torres, Emiliano López, operated. -Achurra and Antonio Llardén, the latter being prominent energy industrialists.
Years ago, Juliana wrote: “It is important to know where we are when we know that we inhabit the immense.” On the tapestry, the furies of the immense: 11-M, the crisis of 2008, the process, 15-M, the abdication, the pandemic and the wars. And before us the pact: the amnesty. “The dynamic that emerges is that amnesty means ‘all in.’” Like in 1978.