May 16, 2013: “The director of The country he kicked me out Opinion and I’ve gone from The country. So many years… But it’s a relief.”
June 15, 2020: “Soledad Gallego-Diaz leave the address of The country and I happen to inform you that my article from the previous Saturday is the last one you have read in that medium. I have enjoyed a lot and I thank you, the readers and the companions. I don’t have the cunt for noise.”
Just over seven years separate these messages published by Maruja Torres in your account at Twitter. Seven convulsive years of back and forth and two sentences that perfectly summarize the relationship of the journalist and writer with the recently appointed new director of The country, Xavier Moreno.
A controversy that is nothing more than a new episode in the strange and convulsive relationship that has marked Torres in the last decade with the group in which he has worked for practically half his life. In 2013 the newspaper did not renew his contract under the usual terms and she decided to leave after harshly criticizing the ERE carried out a year before and who he considered his promoter: Juan Luis Cebrian.
Without Cebrián and without Javier Moreno, Torres healed her wounds and undertook a return to the newspaper, convinced by the management of Soledad Gallego-Diaz. It was three months, from the beginning of the pandemic, that ended abruptly this week. Those who have closely experienced this process indicate that it has not been easy for the journalist who was very excited to return to writing in what she has always considered her home.
More than 30 years in ‘El País’
The countryhas been a part of life Maruja Torres, where he has done practically everything, but also the reason for great professional disappointment. She is too sincere to stand out next to power, extremely close to her colleagues and not given to hierarchies, she never held positions within the organization chart, despite being one of her oldest editors.
It was included in the newspaper Rush already with an important journalistic career behind. Born in Barcelona in 1943, she began in the world of journalism two decades later as a secretary and editor in the section Female Page From the newspaper the press. In 1965 he became part of the magazine Garbo and At the same time, he collaborates with the magazine frames where he made his first opinion articles and interviews. During this period he publishes in The country, Please Y The street.
In 1981 he moved to Madrid to join the newspaper The country -founded in 1976- under the supervision of Rose Montero. He would be 33 years in the Prisa newspaper. In the eighties and nineties he was a war correspondent, one of the most prominent.
He was in charge of covering the invasion of Panama by the North American troops and there he lived in 1989 the murder of the photographer Juantxu Rodríguez by shots of the US army. He also covered the conflict in Lebanon and in Beirut established his residence for some years. In the mid-nineties she returns to Barcelona where he collaborates in the publications The viewer Y what to read. In addition to the columns of him in The countrysince September 2006 collaborates in hour 25 in the Ser Chain.
Prisa also allowed her to combine her writing and column work with her prolific career as a writer and novelist. Planet Award in 2000 for his novel as long as we liveat the beginning of 2009 wins the Nadal Award by wait for me in heaven.
The wounds of the ERE
Everything fit together until the arrival of Xavier Moreno to the address of The countryin 2006. Close to its predecessor Jesus Ceberio, Torres he never understood the ways of the new director: dry, cold, close to power and far from his newsroom. “A CEO with the skin of a journalist”According to those who know him.
A few convulsive years in which Torres moved away from day to day, he focused more on his books and his columns, but he did not move away from the newsroom. They were the hard years of the crisis, the sharp drop in newspaper advertising and the almost technical bankruptcy of the Prisa group. It was the time when Juan Luis Cebrián multiplied his pressure on the countrys, when it favored companies and political parties and when large Spanish companies exchanged the company’s debt for Prisa shares.
A period in which creditors demanded cutbacks and The country he had to perform his first and only ERE to date. 129 colleagues left the newsroom Maruja Torres, a third of the workforce, in one of the hardest moments of the Prisa header.
Y Maruja Torres did not shut up On October 11, 2012, he published an incendiary column criticizing the directors who promoted the ERE led by Juan Luis Cebrian and Javier Moreno. “There is a lot of talk about what those who are subject to layoffs, readjustments, downgrades and, in general, what is now called ‘adaptation to current circumstances’, a subtle metaphor of a pickle, suffer. Demagogy. It’s easy to side with the weak. However, no one feels sorry for the bosses.”
“My heart aches when I think of those executives who fly business or first—some, even, in the terrifying isolation of their jet private, owned or rented-, and that they cannot do anything else, understand it well”, he concluded.
First rush outing
Seven months later he left, when Xavier Moreno He proposed that she do reports and remove her from the opinion section of the newspaper. the past Holy Week I received a letter informing me that the newspaper’s management had decided not to extend my contract under the same terms,” the journalist told The world for those dates.
“In the meeting that we have held today, the director began by telling me that the economic situation is terrible and that it is not possible to explain how the other newspapers survive. Later he has tried to ‘sell’ me that it was wasted, that wanted me to do reports again…” he explained to this newspaper. He finally told her that he was not interested in the offer and left.
Months later he began collaborating with eldiario.es and time passed. In 2014 Xavier Moreno would leave the direction of The country and in 2018 his definitive departure from Juan Luis Cebrian. In June of that year, Soledad Gallega was appointed director of the newspaper and things began to change. She was always her turn on the table, but it was not until the beginning of this year that she began to write in the diary again with the coronavirus pandemic as an ‘excuse’.
A return that, however, was aborted only three months later. Soledad Gallego leaves The country and Maruja Torres welcomes Xavier Moreno with his resignation and with the qualification of “the child of the ERE”. “The boy from ERE is back!” He said even before exchanging words with the new director and not before setting the networks on fire with his criticism of the group’s Prisa leadership. A decision that goes back to the most immediate past. That of Juan Luis Cebrian. That of the ERE.
A week of fury that ended with three dream months in which Torres was reunited with his lifelong diary, but which he has had to abandon again because of Xavier Moreno and again because of his troubled relationship with the company’s management. The nightmare repeats itself.
