In 2015, the journalist Miquel Alberola left the position of delegate in Valencian lands of the newspaper El País and moved to Madrid to be a correspondent for four years in the Casa del Rey, the Congress of Deputies and the Senate, a triangle that absorbed the impact of an unprecedented collision in Spanish politics. At that time, the abdication of Juan Carlos I had just taken place, Felipe VI had arrived at a Zarzuela in low hours, Pedro Sánchez had taken charge of the PSOE for the first time and a stormy electoral cycle began with Mariano Rajoy in Moncloa. and the Catalan independence process in the background, which would lead to the declaration of independence of Catalonia in October 2017 and a new management of the Government based on the motion of censure won by Sánchez himself a few months later.
During those years, Miquel Alberola wrote a diary that he has just published under the title Cròniques des de Madrid. A journalist to the Court (Llibres de la Drassana, 2023) and that arrives in bookstores this week. In a kind of forced exile to the place where the main issues of Spain are cooked, the days go by with the persistent memory of an Azorín transferred to a very different Madrid, that of the late 19th century. And with first-hand information coming from the circles of Zarzuela and the bowels of the Cortes, Alberola traces fifty-five chronicles that delve into various topics: the logic of the Crown's operation; the successive trips made by Felipe VI and Queen Letizia to Tokyo, London, Buenos Aires, Guatemala, Peru, Mozambique, Iraq, Oviedo or Girona; the congestion of a political scene marked by the continuous elections and the maneuvers of Rajoy, Sánchez, Rivera or Iglesias; the clashes between the main state nationalisms; the issues of international diplomacy and the constant reflections on the journalistic profession itself.
All with a deep look that is ironic at the same time, and with a sharp, suggestive and captivating prose, as few journalists in the country can offer. As the writer Manuel Vicent points out in the book's prologue, "tied to the hard bench of the newsroom, like the one who goes to the salt mine every day, Miquel Alberola has always proven to be a reliable, well-informed journalist, the success of which , beyond being read in any case, has always been to be believed, using his signature as the only asset”. In this diary he also shows that his signature is also synonymous with good literature. The book will be officially presented on Wednesday, April 12 at 7:00 p.m. at the Fan Set bookstore in Valencia, with the presence of the author, the writer Ferran Torrent and the journalist J. J. Pérez Benlloch.
