Eduardo González
Since last Tuesday, the Caja de las Letras of the Instituto Cervantes has hosted the collective legacy of the thirteen newspapers of the Vocento communication group, eight of which are more than one hundred years old.
The journalistic articles, documents, photographs, covers, caricatures or books deposited by the directors of the thirteen newspapers “make up the memory of the last century and a half of Spain, in which the first figures of our culture and our letters appear,” reported Cervantes. With this act, the Institute also inaugurates a new stage in its vault, which for the first time opens its safe deposit boxes to the press, an initiative that will soon continue with other media outlets.
“Culture and journalism have a fraternal relationship: they are interrelated and need each other.” And “literature, creation and journalism go hand in hand,” declared the director of the Instituto Cervantes, Luis García Montero, during the event. An example of this, he explained, are the many authors who have published in the press, such as Benito Pérez Galdós, Carmen de Burgos, Azorín, Miguel Delibes or Gabriel García Márquez.
For García Montero, the news media are very important in the construction and reflection of culture, and play a relevant role in the defense of democratic values and the exercise of freedom of expression and information. In difficult times like the current ones, in which democracy is being vindicated, he declared, we must rely on a “basic axis” such as information. Along these lines, he encouraged us to reflect on journalism as a fundamental part of democracy, culture and intellectual traditions.
For his part, the president of Vocento, Ignacio Ybarra, thanked the Instituto Cervantes for the honor of “opening this new stage” in the Caja de las Letras with the entry of media legacies, which means recognizing “its role in the defense of democratic values.”
One after another, the thirteen Vocento media directors deposited the voluminous collective legacy in box number 1263, one of the largest capacity, similar to those previously used by Les Luthiers, Joaquín Sabina or the plastic artist Lita Cabellut.
The legacy
Regarding the legacy deposited in the Instituto Cervantes, in order of seniority of the respective media, the director of El Norte de Castilla (1854), Ángel Ortiz left two original caricatures made by Miguel Delibes and published in the Valladolid newspaper on September 15 from 1942; The director of Las Provincias (1866), Jesús Trelis, deposited a reproduction of the “founding manifesto” with the principles (January 1860) that inspired the birth of this Valencian newspaper and a facsimile of the first issue of the newspaper, which appeared on January 31 of 1866.
The deputy director of El Comercio (1878), Ángel M. González, paid tribute to Marcelino Gutiérrez, who directed the oldest newspaper of the Asturian press until his sudden death on September 24 at the age of 48, and deposited a copy of the first newspaper (1954) directed by Francisco Carantoña Dubert, who headed the newspaper for four decades, until 1995.
The director of La Rioja (1889), Teresa Cobo, bequeathed the founding prospectus (known as La Hoja) of the newspaper, as well as five articles written by Miguel de Unamuno during the Second Republic; The director of El Diario Montañés (1902), Íñigo Noriega, deposited two souvenirs of two Cervantes prizewinners linked to Cantabria: Gerardo Diego and the adopted Cantabrian José Hierro (specifically, a watercolor for a cover).
The director of ABC (1903), Julián Quirós, left the only existing photograph of the attack on Alfonso XIII, Mingote’s first joke (1953), the first cover of ABC with its founding manifesto, the cover of October 19, 1955 with the photo of José Ortega y Gasset’s death mask (this is how censorship was circumvented, which had prohibited reproducing the thinker’s face), the cover on March 17, 1984 with the world exclusive of Sonetos del amor oscuro (Sonnets of Dark Love), by Federico García Lorca, never published until then; the cover of the first issue of ABC Cultural (November 8, 1991), which was the first cultural supplement of the Spanish press; and articles by Azorín and the journalist Julio Camba (both from 1913).
The director of La Verdad (1903), Alberto Aguirre de Cárcer, left fifteen copies of Ababol, the literary supplement of the Murcia newspaper, which was a breakwater of the poetic avant-garde and unifier of the Generation of ’27 and which includes poems by Juan Ramón, Lorca, the Machado, Gabriela Mistral, Cernuda, Jorge Guillén, Alberti and Pedro Salinas, among others.
For El Correo (1910), its director, José Miguel Santamaría, chose a book with the 36 Journalism Awards awarded by the Bilbao newspaper as a “small tribute to the language” and with articles by Álvaro Pombo, Julio Llamazares, Rosa Montero, Jon Juaristi, Lorenzo Silva, Adela Cortina, Juan Pablo Fusi or the filmmakers Isabel Coixet or Gonzalo Suárez, among others.
The director of Ideal (1932), Eduardo Peralta, deposited One Hundred Years of Ganivet and Lorca, an original large-format book in a numbered edition that the Granada newspaper published in 1998 on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Ángel Ganivet, considered a precursor of the Generation 98, and the birth of Federico García Lorca.
The director of Hoy (1933), Mar Domínguez, took advantage of the ninetieth anniversary of the Extremadura newspaper to bequeath a twelve-page facsimile of the first issue of Hoy, with articles by José María Pemán, among others. For his part, the director of El Diario Vasco (1934). David Taberna, bequeathed a copy dated October 21, 2011 with the news: “END. ETA announces the definitive cessation of violence.”
The director of Sur (1937), Manolo Castillo, provided the original document of the speech given by Manuel Alcántara, poet and columnist for the entire Vocento group since 1989, on the occasion of the first Journalism Award that bears his name, created in 1998; Finally, the director of Relevo (2022), Óscar Campillo, left some printouts with the “relevos” (cover headlines of this digital sports newspaper) and with illustrations that went viral on social networks, in addition to a QR code and a USB memory, all of this, related to the Luis Rubiales “affair”, the Royal Spanish Football Federation and the player Jenni Hermoso.
