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Spain culture |
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Rosa
Montero
Journalist
The El
País journalist Rosa Montero talks about her career during
one of Spain's most turbulent periods and how she charmed the fascists.
To be a journalist 30 years ago in Spain was to be right on the spot
for one of the biggest stories in its history, and Rosa Montero was
there, finding her voice as part of the progressive movement of the
1970s. "During Franco's regime there was a kind of dictated
public language and dialogue that people couldn't get away from,"
she remembers. "When I started out as a young journalist in 1969
I felt a real need to go back and use words that had some kind of real
meaning for daily life".
To support herself she freelanced for a number of magazines and newspapers
in her home town of Madrid, taking whatever job came her way. "In
1969 it wasn't uncommon to have doors closed to you because there were
many, many places then that simply and legally refused to hire women.
So you held on to whatever writing job you could get. They paid us a
mere pittance and we worked hard for every peseta we earned. But two
duros [five-peseta coins] went a long way in our uncouth and simple
lifestyles," she adds, laughing.
The newspaper El País was launched in May 1976 and when the Sunday
supplement followed towards the end of that year, Rosa's long-standing
relationship with the national press began. "We always had the
feeling that we were writing history," she says. "We were
holding up this mirror to what was going on around us. They were brilliant
and fascinating years. People writing for the paper became known very
quickly and I was one of them. It makes me proud to be able to say I
am a good journalist".
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VALENCIA:
Every year, in April, the Saint gives victory to the Christian hosts as Alcoy, in the Valencia, re-enacts the famous, and largely mythical, battle.
Read more.
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