“In Spain, conflict situations are dramatized to dissuade the adversary”

“In Spain there is a tendency to strongly dramatize conflictive situations to dissuade the adversary,” was one of the most notable reflections of Enric Juliana, deputy director of La Vanguardia, during an exclusive meeting this afternoon with subscribers of the newspaper that I have had. place for the first time in Madrid, at the Cupra City Garage, and which has been moderated by Joana Bonet, director of Magazine de La Vanguardia.

Juliana, who arrived at the La Vanguardia delegation in Madrid 20 years ago, opened the meeting by answering a question from Bonet in reference to her latest book, Spain, the pact and the fury and if that is the current portrait of the country. “Today is an illustrative day of Spanish politics,” said Juliana, who recalled that “last week it seemed that the first opposition party, for the first time since July 2023, wanted to talk about policies with proposals on conciliation or the work day and we have seen how this has been swept away in a matter of days. “The fury has swept away.”

This phenomenon is not exclusively Spanish but, throughout the world, “we are in a historical phase of many overlapping and accelerated changes that generate enormous questions, perplexities and insecurities that subject contemporary societies to significant levels of tension and mental erosion.” . And he reiterated: “It is an atmosphere of fury.”

Juliana recalled her time as a correspondent in Italy, where she arrived in the mid-nineties. “Since my first trip as a youth I fell in love with that country and when the possibility of being a correspondent arose, I asked for it.” There he learned to “open his mind and see many things from another angle because until then he only did it from the prism of Barcelona and Spanish politics.”

While there, he was appointed deputy editor of the newspaper and returned to the Barcelona editorial office to coordinate various sections. “And after a few years they asked me to go as a delegate to Madrid, a delegation that was inaugurated in 1935.” Bonet has suggested that more than a delegate, Juliana offers a look as if she were a correspondent in Madrid. “I have kept a bit of focus on what I learned in Italy, which means a middle-distance exercise, but it would be a deception to define myself as a correspondent.”

Juliana recalled that when she arrived in Madrid, “for a year I had the feeling of not understanding anything because I had the idea of ​​Spain as a country of literality and direct people and one begins to realize that Spanish theatrical capacity is very notable.” . While in Italy he learned that comedy is used to confront conflictive situations, “here it is the other way around, there is a tendency to strongly dramatize conflictive situations to dissuade the adversary. . And we see this every day in the Congress of Deputies. And we all have the feeling that, one more step, and this could end very badly.”