I always say what I think
And I Assume The Consequences
In this personal page I would like to show a summary of my journalistic work over the years. I think it may help to understand, to those who are interested, the model of journalism that I have tried to carry out, especially in VilaWeb. And, in any case, it explains me. At a time like this when the stupidity of any undocumented person seems to weigh more than the work of a lifetime, it seemed to me that it was not only good but necessary to explain myself at length. The pandemic of 2020 has helped me indirectly, because during the confinement I have been able to work these materials in a way that I would not have been able to do in normal circumstances. I have made this web by myself, by hand as before, and therefore all the responsibility for it is mine and mine alone.
As always. I am always responsible for everything I have done and do. I always say what I think and I assume the consequences. That’s why it irritates me when sometimes there are intentional caricatures, and generally very interested ones, that try to base a personage from me in which I don’t recognize myself. I know that bad reading and hatred do not allow to read anything and even less to understand what is read. But I am who I am and only me, and my work, which has been going on for forty years, define me. This page, at the end, is about that and, therefore, it is also against manipulators of any kind, origin or intention.
What can you find in this website
The spaces you will find there, most of them in Catalan, are the following:
Personal. Here you will find my curriculum (in abridged and complete version), some interviews in several languages that other media have made to me, a selection of photographs, basically related to the work, a space with some curiosities, personal and professional, that maybe you will enjoy, and the access to my personal blog, Mails per a Hipàtia.
You can read my bio in English here
VilaWeb. Of all the many things I have done in this life, I am sure that the one that will remain as the most important is VilaWeb, the newspaper that Assumpció Maresma and I started in 1995. That’s why I dedicate a section of my own to it. Here you will find a historical selection of the editorial article I write every day, which I believe has the value above all to respond to those who cyclically decide that I am this or that: I am only what I write.
You will also find the text “How we have made VilaWeb“, an article that Assumpció and I wrote on the occasion of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the newspaper and that gives some of the keys to explain the success and the shortcomings of this one.
And finally “És l’hora d’alçar barris a Internet“, a text from 1995 that could be considered in some way as the initial manifesto and that, evidently, should be read with the eyes of that moment.
Journalism. This section is the one that contains more materials. And the one with more organizational complexity.
In “Els grans temes” I make a review of great themes that have occupied my work over the years -obsessions, as if we would say.
A first topic is that of Opinion.
I have had to do much more opinion than I would have liked to do and than I would normally do. But things are the way they are and here I try to reflect opinions made in different media and on different subjects. Obviously there is the editorial of VilaWeb, but you can also find the opinions that I wrote regularly in El Temps or La Vanguardia in the late eighties and early nineties. And also the analysis of international politics that I did on a daily basis for many years at El Punt -which is the job that I have most enjoyed and enjoyed doing in my life. There are not all the articles, it would be an unbearable task for me to compile them all, but the sample is enough. I have given my opinion in some other publications as well, but in a very sketchy and anecdotic way, so I consider that with these examples there is enough to reflect who I am.
The second of these great themes is Interviews.
I am not a great interviewer nor have I ever distinguished myself in this field. But due to circumstances I’ve done some that have marked me and I’ve been excited to share them. One especially important for me is the interview I did with Salva Enguix to Joan Fuster for La Vanguardia, which was published on October 6, 1991. With that interview Fuster, the person who can be considered the most important contemporary Catalan intellectual and undoubtedly the most influential in my education, broke many years of silence. The memory of that very long evening at his house will always accompany me in a very special way.
The third of the great themes are the reporting job, both national and international.
As a reporter I have worked mostly abroad, but nevertheless I have taken some national reports that I think may be of interest. Among them the story of how the intelligence unit of the Catalan police chased Younes Abouyaaqoub and found him in a hundred hours, after the Barcelona attack in 2017. (In English: One hundred hours chasing Younes) This is the most intense journalistic work I think I have ever done in my life because of the difficulty of the sources. I worked on it for almost a year, step by step, until I managed to publish this story, which explains some things that no one has ever explained before. It is also very special, because it is emotional, the story of the return of President Puigdemont to Catalonia. I had the good fortune that he invited me to accompany him in the car that took him to Perpinyà on February 28, 2020, with which I was able to experience the story firsthand.
t was not the first time it had happened to me. As a foreign affairs reporter I have seen episodes in four continents that are already part of the history books and that is why, in this section of International Reporting, there are texts, videos and many things related to those moments that I was so lucky to be able to relate to the readers or viewers. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall or the end of the Soviet Union or the apartheid in South Africa. From the revolt of the Chinese students in Tiananmen to the recent revolution in Hong Kong, through the beginnings of Palestinian autonomy, various elections in the United States, conflicts such as those in Kurdistan or the secessionist republics in countries like Moldova or Georgia, as well as wars like the one in the Balkans. And of course all kinds of other events in Europe.
Altres mitjans is a section where I include a sample of my work in other media.
Here you will find El Temps (both with opinion articles, as with “Focus” a special current affairs section of which I was the creator and which represented a revolution in the way topics were presented, or the pioneer El Temps Online), Diari de Barcelona (where I first worked as a correspondent in València and later in the Barcelona newsroom), La Vanguardia, El Punt (where I have done everything: opinion articles, analysis of international politics, sports commentaries in L’Esportiu or La Pissarreta, a television program that became very popular, in ElPuntAvui TV) or Berria and Nós Diario, Basque and Galician-Portuguese newspapers with which VilaWeb has a very special relationship. And also a collection of the radio program L’Internauta, which I started at Catalunya Ràdio with Jordi Vendrell in 1995 and which I had to follow by myself for a few years after his death, first on radio and then on video at VilaWeb. Unfortunately there is no archive of the first years of the program on the radio. It would be very important because all the beginning of the Internet in the Catalan Countries went through there.
The biggest gap in this section is precisely my work at TVE, but unfortunately I don’t have any video archive.
The section also includes a document that I have titled “Some criteria” and that is a kind of applied summary of my journalistic thinking. I started to write this document in the middle of the eighties as a proposal for a style book for El Temps, but I have continued to update it throughout my life, without it having been adopted by any media. I think it can be interesting because of the reflections it contains. In this sense I have also included the text “Elogi de la complexitat“, which I think complements it well.
This Great Themes section is completed by some conferences on video about journalism that I have given over the years, in Catalan or English, and the link to the European Journalism Centre, the European organization in which I have worked since the nineteen-eighties and of which I am now the Chairman of the Board.
Llibres, as its name indicates, presents the books I have written. Both the volumes of which I am the author and those in which I have written the foreword. I have not put the collective books in which I have collaborated, the list of which, however, can be found in the complete version of my curriculum.
Conferències. Finally I have grouped some of my lectures in video. By themes. On journalism, on culture, on internet or on politics and I have also grouped some of the ones I have done in English on different subjects.
Some articles and videos in English
-“If you don’t have a sense of national identity, you can’t have a democracy”. An interview with Francis Fukuyama.
-“We weren’t aggressive, we defended our country”. An interview with Elena Vavilova, the Russian spy who deceived the US for twenty-five years.
-One hundred hours chasing Younes, The pursuit of the terrorists behind the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in 2017. An almost year-long investigation.
–The Spanish eccentricity. Why the authoritarian temptation is so strong in Spain.
–From the rooftops of Teheran to the bridge over the Bosphorus. Analysis of the surprising coup in 2016 Turkey and the consequences it might have.
-‘My home is on fire and you expect me to just snap a few pictures and write a column?’ An interview with Can Dündar
–The shame of Spanish journalism. ‘‘A society willing to be distracted by a dishonoured press is only heading towards slavery’’
–We’re nations between borders. An interview with Alan Stivell.
–Who has the real power in Spain? Spain’s big corporations are showing renewed faith in the Socialist Party.
–A little Wolin to understand where Catalonia stands and what constitutes a democracy.
–Who are the young protestors of the Catalan revolt?
–The Spanish railway incline. Taking the Catalan issue to the courts would result in the loss of control over Spain’s train and, sooner or later, it would end in a crash.
If you want to contact me the easiest way is to send an email to vicent@partal.cat