On November 23, 2019 Josep Maria Espinas saw printed his last column Just 70 years after the publication of his first article in ‘El Correo Catalán’, after 43 years of daily columnism (first in the ‘Avui’ and the last 20 years, in EL PERIÓDICO). It was a discreet goodbye: there was no last article with the will of farewell to the readers because Espinàs wrote until the last day he could and stopped doing so “accidentally”, as he also said on one occasion that he would leave this world. In a writer for whom to live was to observe, and I did not understand observing without writing, saying goodbye to his column would have been much more than that. That discreet withdrawal from papers and from life began that day and this Sunday he died at the age of 95, at around 6:00 p.m. in a Barcelona hospital where he was admitted two days earlier due to respiratory problems.
That 2019 had started with an almost definitive blow: the death at the age of 64 of his daughter Olga, the eldest of her three children and recipient of ‘The name is Olga’ (1986), a milestone, in those years, in the visibility of people with Down syndrome. thorns still wrote about this loss, but he had already devoted many pages to the end of life. In ‘A rhythm of the temps. Notes of a life’ (2015), he fantasized about his own death: “Someone will comment / sincerely, em sembla, / that li sabia greu. Things that are diuen / debò, a vegades. / He will regret not being able to thank you / or excuse himself. But això jo m’avanço: / he has mort sense voler-ho & rdquor ;.
Lawyer ‘lletraferit’
Born into a “discreetly bourgeois” family, grandson of a doctor, early ‘lletraferit’, law degree and little litigious lawyer for four years, aspiring to a discreet and nutritious position as a municipal official, explained that he lost points because at the police station they classified him as “indifferent & rdquor; to the regime. On that occasion he told the policeman that he had already published in ‘El Correo Catalán’. The next time he needed an endorsement, he tried letting it drop that he was writing in ‘La Vanguardia’. That time he got the stamp of “addicted & rdquor ;.
Candidate consolidate a literary career as a novelist, public between 1953 and 1968 four books of short stories and nine novels. He became known with the novel ‘With ganivets or flames’, Joanot Martorell prize in 1953and in 1961 obtained the Sant Jordi novel prize with ‘L’últim replà’. But it will not be for his novels that he will be remembered but for his condition as an “observer& rdquor; curious, distantly reflective, never dramatic, almost always ironic. The relationship between Espinàs and the Catalan literary establishment (restauranted with the award of the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes in 2002 and the award of numerous awards) I would oscillate between indifference and indifference. In ‘My office’ (2008) recalled that, given the non-existence of the epigraph “writer”, a civil servant offered to classify him as “First-class technician & rdquor ;. “Neither relatives, nor friends, nor critics have ever praised me like this,” he wrote. “I have published many books and thousands of articles without having managed to do a ‘work’, and who knows if this also has some merit, or is simply a failure. Because you become this horrible thing that is a ‘multifaceted’ (…) and jumping from one side to another, from a novel to a travel book, from a book about your daughter to a collection of reflections on the passage of time , it is very difficult to make a ‘work’ that deserves respect& rdquor;. Although that of the readers, at least, did have it.
From ‘Destino’ to Avui’ and ‘El Periódico’
His relationship as a junior member of the editorial staff of ‘Destiny’, on the arm of his brother-in-law Néstor Lujánmainstay of the magazine, explains much of his prolific and diverse work: the style and interests of the Pla, Luján, Delibes or Sempronio family float over his books dedicated to the streets of Barcelona, Cadaquès, the main festivals, figures such as Josep Maria de Sagarra, his first trips on foot…
Member of the Setze Judges, recorded 11 albums, from Brassens adaptations to children’s songs (and composed the lyrics of the FC Barcelona anthem as with Jaume Picas). “If a journalist or literary critic had the idea to ask me what is the most important thing I have written, I would not cite my novels or the series of books on foot trips. The answer would be this: the ‘Cant of the boat‘. None of my readers stand up to read a book written by me, but they can reach 100,000 people who sing The whole camp is a clam…“, recognized in one of his articles. He interviewed dozens of personalities in depth, for six years, in the Televisió de Catalunya programs ‘Identitats’ and ‘Senyals’. But they deserve a separate chapter 20 walking travel books and its four decades as a columnist in the daily press.
After a first trilogy of trips to the Pyrenees of Lleida (1957), Priorat (1962) and Segarra (1972), after a long pause, Espinàs set out on the roads, first in Catalonia, then in other Catalan-speaking countries and later in other parts of Spain, from the founding of the La Campana publishing house with what would since then be his partner and inseparable editor, Isabel Martí. Were 17 more journeys on foot, between 1989 and 2009, which led to one of the many misunderstandings about the elusive Espinàs, that of the hiker Espinàs. He was a walker on asphalt, and it was difficult for Isabel Martí to stop destroying city shoes. The landscape that interested him was the human one. “People associate Espinàs with a Catalanist and a chiruquero. Rotten lie … I have never worn chirucas & rdquor ;, he replied.
More London (advocate that ironic distance should start with oneself) that Montserrat described his relationship with religion in a Spinasian way, denying that he was a disbeliever “because a disbeliever, in principle, etymologically, would be someone who has believed and stopped believing. He is very different from someone who has never believed & rdquor ;. About politics she hardly wrote. “Politics is not observable & rdquor ;, dropped Although ‘Inventory of retirements’ He rescues an episode that he has barely spoken about again: his participation in the 1980 parliamentary elections on the lists of Nacionalistes d’Esquerra in third place for Barcelona (after Lluís Llach took a step back) behind Jordi Carbonell and Magda Oranich, and above Armand de Fluvià, Vicenç Altaió, Jordi Coca, Tísner, Joan Oliver… ”I’ve never signed up for any site”I remembered in that book.
life from a column
Columnism was for Espinàs, from the beginning of his column ‘A la vora de…’ in Avui, in 1976, a habit and a necessity, like breathing. “It forces me to think& rdquor ;, he explained to us when he completed his first 40 years as a daily column. In 1999 his piece moved, now under the name of ‘Petit observatori’, recovering the epigraph of his old piece in ‘Destino’, to EL PERIÓDICO.
The bulk of his work as a columnist was collected in 2013 in the volume ‘An articulated life’, the book for which he wanted to be remembered. Speaking of him, he summarized his “relativistic & rdquor; and “presentist & rdquor; about the world: “My life is observation & rdquor ;; “everything surprises me, everything interests me& rdquor ;; “I am not in favor of resounding statements, of personal definitions& rdquor ;; “I don’t consider myself an ‘ist’ of anything; “It is very difficult for me to be anti-anything & rdquor ;; “Like all people who believe in feelings, I am anti-sentimentalist & rdquor ;; “I am not a generalizer, I am more of a particularizer. I am more for concretion and detail & rdquor ;.
In 1992, when he turned 65, he opened a new branch in his torrential bibliography, a series of autobiographical texts that would add up to a kind of fragmented biography: ‘Inventari de jubilacions’ (1992), ‘Temps afegit’ (2001), ‘Relacions particulars’ (anecdotes of his relationships with other writers, 2007), ‘El meu ofici’ (2008), ‘I la festa segueix’ (2009), ‘Entre els lectors i jo’ (2011), ‘A ritme del temps. Notes of a life’ (2015) and ‘La vella capitana’ (2016).
self obituaries
In ‘A ritme del temps’, Espinàs closed with this self obituary in free verse his ‘Notes of a life’:
“L’Espinas? Yes, a bon noi, / gairebé always friendly. / They are going to donate some literary prizes, / Above all in some times / in which there was little competition. / The trips to peu? Yes, a colla, / però només explica allò que viba, / no hi projectava / cap tesi interessant / sobre l’espècie humana. / He will write many articles, yes, / but he has little ambition. / I am certain that he was interested in everything that he saw / but he did not formulate cap doctrine / on the construction of the human being, / nor so sols incident / in epigraphy. / He is going to write the ‘Cant del Barça’, it is true, / l’home had traces for fer verses / -poetry is completely something else- / i will be able to recognize him among his merits / what fes cançons sense to know about sol-fa. / He will know how to be modest -difficult virtue- / with him li correspondia, / and he may be, according to sembla, / enemic of none. / I això, com és sabut, és el señal / de la insignificança”.
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It was not the first time he had written about his last days. Having lived to be 95 years old gives plenty of time to think about them. In ‘El meu ofici’ (2008) she came to leave these “last wills & rdquor ;.“That in the seu comiat no more eulogies than the indispensable are given, If both phrases can be well constructed, because in this situation it is not possible to defend themselves from ridicule. I what, Sorting out of the tanatori, the people tried not to talk about politics, or religion, or the state of the Catalan language: What a talk of the heat, if it’s a good day, or of the pluja, if that’s what plou. And, above all, that I don’t have the bad taste of applauding. The deceased will appreciate that the assistants share their silence & rdquor ;.
You can read here all articles by Josep Maria Espinàs published on the EL PERIÓDICO website.