‘Don’t call me Veal‘Not only has it outraged a sector of the Spanish press and the 514 signatories of the letter in which the San Sebastian Festival to remove it from your schedule, too has disappointed – for different reasons – the two people who star in it. In an interview published a few days ago by the newspaper ‘Berria’, Josu Ternera He regretted the decontextualization that, in his opinion, the documentary makes of his words, and today Jordi Évole He was disappointed by the attitude shown by the former ETA leader during the conversation. “I would have liked him to offer a more conciliatory image and had kinder words,” explained the film’s co-director shortly before its official presentation at the festival. “During the interview he dedicated himself to speaking more internally than externally, he addressed the prisoners who are still in jail and the Aberzale militancy, and that nullified the possibility of him offering a more conciliatory speech.”
Inevitably, the controversy aroused by the aforementioned letter and by the preventive censorship that was demanded in it on the grounds that the documentary offered a “whitewashing” of Ternera’s image has featured in a good part of the meeting that Évole and the co-director Màrius Sánchez have held with the press. “Interviewing is not whitewashing. Yeah [los firmantes] They have come to the conclusion that we have whitewashed Josu Urrutikoetxea because they do not know us; “If they place us on the side of the Aberzale left, it’s because they don’t know who we are,” Évole assured. “We have a very educated citizenry, who does not need anyone to tell them which films they have to see and which they cannot see.” According to Sánchez, “the verb whiten is being used too much, and very badly.”
“Indisputable informative interest”
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The couple of directors are accustomed to generating controversy, after having interviewed figures such as Arnaldo Otegi, ETA member Iñaki Recarte and Miguel Bosé in their television program ‘Lo de Évole’, but they assure that at no time was it their intention “to arrive at this press conference having generated so much noise beforehand” . They are calm about it and convinced that “every decision regarding the documentary has been very thoughtful and highly discussed,” says Sánchez. “The informative interest of an interview with a terrorist leader is indisputable“No journalism school will question that,” adds Évole in this regard. “We wanted to shed light where there was none. “It is the first time that an ETA leader gives an interview to television, which has turned out to be one of global reach,” explains the director in reference to Netflix, which will host the premiere of ‘No me llama Ternera’ on December 15. “In none of the films that were produced about the Basque conflict on the tenth anniversary of the abandonment of arms was ETA’s point of view taken up, and it seemed essential to us that it be known.”
In other words, Évole indicates, ‘Don’t Call Me Veal’ is a product of their sense of journalistic duty, and of those who consider it a need to reflect on history no matter how painful it may be. “The end of the violence did not happen that long ago, and despite that many young people do not even know who Miguel Angel Blanco was; that’s an anomaly. We have to decide if we want a society in which they shout “Let Txapote vote for you” without knowing who Txapote was, or one in which it is known that Txapote was Blanco’s murderer,” he clarified today. “We feel absolute pride in having made the documentary. “If tomorrow I were regretting not having done it because I was afraid, I would be unable to forgive myself.”