Josep Maria Espinas He died on Sunday at six in the afternoon, I saw the news shortly after. And at nine, after hearing the ‘Cant of the boat’ that he wrote and the minute of silence at the Camp Nou, I was already able to read on the web the magnificent and punctual portrait of Ernest Alós in EL PERIÓDICO. On Monday I heard that Isabel Martí, with whom she founded the publishing house La Campanahe told Basté that for Espinàs life was writing and that he did not have a good time when he had to leave it at the end of 2019.
For 43 years, Espinàs, first in ‘Avui’ and since 1999 in EL PERIÓDICO, wrote a daily column in which he observed reality with simplicity and without pretense. It was a sign of identity of this newspaper.
At the end of the Civil War he was 12 years old and he has been an actor and a benchmark for the revival of Catalonia since then. The first newspaper in Catalan did not come out until Franco’s death. Already in 1953, at the age of 26, Espinàs won the Joanot Martorell prize for the Catalan novel, which later became the Sant Jordi prize. And he worked at the publishing house and the weekly ‘Destino’, the Falangist magazine of origin (1939) which in the 50s and 60s became a must-read for the restless Catalan middle class.
In 1960 it was one of the promoters of Els Setze Jutges and of the Catalan ‘cançó’. I have remembered many times one of his lyrics: “Life is a guitar like nothing that we embrace sense for, sovint caldrà that deixem pell i ungles per treure’n una cançó& rdquor ;. Another strong idea: “Everything surprises me, and interests me, I don’t like resounding statements & rdquor ;. He was an attentive and skeptical observerfaithful without fuss to his convictions.
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In 1980, the first Catalan elections, he was tempted by politics. He was not convinced by the list of Pujol (because it was conservative?), nor that of the PSC de Reventós (because it was the PSOE?), nor that of the PSUC and Josep Benet (because it was Marxist?), nor that of Esquerra de Barrera (the past ?). He took note of the result of Nacionalistes d’Esquerra and did not insist.
His thing was to be faithful to his drive, that of a educated and curious hipster with a great plus of ‘seny’.