Tomorrow night, at the so-called “great festival of Spanish cinema”, the Goya awards will be handed out. I, who have written some scripts, have always aspired to do like the great Rafael Azcona, who did not attend those events even if they were to reward him. It wasn’t a matter of arrogance but of humility: someone like him, more than adding glamour, thought he was taking it away, so in acts like that it was unnecessary. I think the same as Azcona and I bring even less glamour, and yet I have to admit that the two times I was a candidate for a Goya I did not stop attending the gala. Both times I did it so my mom would see me on TV and be proud of me. Neither of those two times did she see me.

The first was in 1998, when I was nominated for the adaptation of my novel Secondary Roads. They told me where I should sit so that, when the time came, the camera would focus on me and my face would appear on the screen along with the other two finalists. However, that moment came and, I don’t know why, there were only cameras for the other finalists: they sent me off putting a photo of a book cover.

The second time was in 2008 and the movie was The 13 Roses. By then the number of finalists in the different categories had increased (in the script there were five of us) and, with the excuse of lightening up a ceremony that was expected to be long, it had been decided to broadcast it falsely direct, with a delay of several minutes that they took advantage of. to cut out what was not “relevant for television.” They’re guessing: I didn’t win the award, the shots I was in were deemed irrelevant, and my mother was left with a handful of noses again.

Those who are not missing from the Goya ceremony are the politicians, who precisely come to claim glamor. Some of them are received with suspicion and even hostility. It happened, for example, with José Ignacio Wert, of ill-fated memory. Do you remember him? His obligation as Minister of Culture consisted of protecting professionals in the sector, but in reality the man served other interests. It was Wert who abolished the digital canon, essential so that creators could make a living from their work without depending on the discretion of any patron. That canon, which amounted to 115 million a year and was paid by the large technology multinationals, was replaced by a modest fund of just five million, which came from the general state budget. A beautiful way to defend the world of culture, a beautiful way to defend what is public. A servile lackey of the all-powerful multinationals, for whom he saved so much money, I suppose the bosses will still remember to run their hand over his back from time to time.

In reality, Wert was just one more piece of a strategy that had been put in place three years earlier, when the right wing declared war on “those with the eyebrows,” a group of intellectuals and artists who had supported José’s re-election. Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. First, in the name of a bizarre concept of freedom, Minister Ángeles González-Sinde, who had tried to defend copyright in a Spain that had become the undisputed leader of piracy, was put in the pillory. Later, to ensure the defenselessness of the creators, the cannons were pointed at the management companies, first undermining their reputation and later designing their economic strangulation.

The coup de grace came in July 2011, when, recently re-elected as president of the SGAE, Teddy Bautista was taken to police cells, accused of fraud and embezzlement. What was then touted as “looting” was not long in providing concrete figures. Twenty-one million euros: that was the amount that Bautista and his accomplices would have stolen from the members of the SGAE. Wert and his people would be happy: the SGAE had been discredited, the creators were deprived of one of their main sources of income, computer piracy continued to run rampant… That the accusations against the SGAE turned out to be a crude setup must have seemed to them secondary. By the time the courts acquitted Teddy Bautista and the rest of the defendants of all the charges and with all the favorable rulings, no less than ten years had passed. The damage was already done.