When Josep Maria Espinàs began writing his column for Avui, with the appearance of this newspaper in April 1976, he was 49 years old. It is a fact that I had always overlooked and that now, with the death of the veteran writer, seems revealing of a time and a country. Although Espinàs had published his first book in 1954, and had won prizes, and was part of the literary environment, and had established himself as a member of the Setze Jutges that inaugurate the nova cançó, and had success working in advertising, he was unable to reach a large audience until the right time and vehicle show up. And that happens when democracy is released and a little before the reestablishment of the Generalitat.
Then, the influential columnist Espinàs was born, the one who connects with a majority that feels interpreted and questioned by a voice that reasons from a tone and a style of enormous expressive efficiency. Espinàs's literary naturalness is not by chance: it is the result of a conscious and elaborate purification of the narrator that he argues and the opinion-maker that he describes. The observer has a strategy: to attack the news from the flanks, and that makes it original and entertaining.
In other words: the irruption of the Espinàs phenomenon coincides with the biographical and professional maturity of the author. No one could brand him as a promising young man in 1976. That will sound strange right now, accustomed to an inertial exaltation of young people, an attitude often covered in a paternalism that wants to be forgiven for the sin of not sufficiently idolizing everything new.
Espinàs, who continued his work as a columnist for El Periódico, spent a long first period as a writer under the restrictions of the dictatorship. Hard times. For many, that Espinàs from before Avui was and is invisible. But without that trip, the professional who contributed decisively to forging a new type of journalism in Catalan would not have emerged. And I say professional because, as Espinàs stated, "I was so fond of writing that I did not hesitate to take the risky step of turning my hobby into my profession." It is convenient to claim this dimension when some clever people want to give a pig for a poke. Let's not lose sight of the fact that, Espinàs said, "professionalism is not defined by income but by rigor".
