On Tuesday, October 3, 2017, in the middle of the morning, with the shrunken heart and the word hit, I called it:
«Dear Mario, we need you! Catalan civil society has called a demonstration against the separatist coup. It will be this Saturday in Barcecanvas and it is absolutely essential that you intervene. We have to disassemble the false story that is imposed thanks to the perfidy of some and the cowardice of others. You know: “Spain, fascist and repressor state.” Only you can do it effectively. Only you can make the truth open, here and abroad. Please, I beg you, say yes. “
And Mario said yes.
I might not have done it. First, because the same Saturday was scheduled to receive an important award in Moscow: issued tickets, summoned media, hosts waiting. And then for interest. Like so many other alleged referents of constitutionalism, that neither that day nor others gave their face: “Because I am a lone wolf” or “because they also go guided and mengano.” Spanish democratic weakness is the reflection of a sad logic of trenches and a radical distrust in the individual. When the individual is trusted – and Mario trusted others as he trusted himself – what matters is the cause, not the company.
We were at 8 in Atocha. Moneo’s tropical pond turtles still slept, stacked as toys in a child’s room, while the platforms were filled with Spaniards with flags. Mario arrived alone, without the paraphernalia that usually accompanies the great men – and also many mediocre. We sat on the bird, face to face. We talked for a while. We comment on the newspapers. Mario wasted sympathy and kindness with all who came to greet him. Until, after Zaragoza, I saw how he took some typed folios from a folder and began to read them. Slowly, in a low voice, moving the lips, internalizing each paragraph. Like Churchill, another prodigious speaker who did not improvise and that, like him, distinguished himself by his ability to mobilize language at the service of freedom. I waited for him to end and asked him if he was nervous. His face lit up and replied: “I haven’t given a rally for 20 years!” And what rally gave.
In the speech of Mario Vargas Llosa, on October 8, 2017 in Barcelona, the three civic virtues of this moral giant appear, which are also those of civilization: the commitment to freedom, the defense of equality and exemplary practice of fraternity. Already without papers, with the hair scrambled by the wind, with the strength of the exceptional leadership, with the clean verb – extent of demagogy and, nevertheless, loaded with emotion – Mario addressed the protesters as adults. It combined affection with the site. He did not send them to shut up for claiming the prison for Puigdemont. That would have been unfair, and condescending, and auctionally cheesy. He understood the anguish of those who had been marginalized for decades, and who now, were converted into foreigners by their own neighbors, and channeled it towards a useful and necessary objective: the defense of a tolerant, integrative, effervescent and democratic Catalonia, the center of constitutional Spain. The one he had met in the 70s, before nationalism buried her under a crust of tribalism and xenophobia. Mario, an essential liberal and one of the intellectuals who with more power and perseverance have dismantled the myth of peripheral nationalism in Spain. Neither democratic nor much less moderate: a destructive atavism.
That day, among the protesters who cheered Mario, there were also Spanish Spaniards. From the illustrated left, which has not been dragged by the reactionary tide of identity. The one that still puts science to feelings and abjuras with any form of discrimination. Some remain in Spain: true progressive, intellectual and politically orphans, for which Mario was also a reference for his vibrant defense of equality before the law. And he had their hands naturally, almost unconscious, for pure humanity. Yes, above all – even above literature, which was his joy and his glory – Mario was a fraternal man. And in that quality there was a world. Literally. To begin with Spain, whose Constitution defended with indeclinable passion, precisely by embodying reconciliation between the different and citizenship as a form of brotherhood. Brothers not race, not blood. Brothers in history and culture, of course. But, above all, brothers in the law. And then there was an West, a non -geographical community, but moral. No one has denounced so bravely and brilliantly the visceral racism of so many Europeans who preach for Latin America what they would never accept for themselves: the Cuban jail, the Venezuelan tomb. And pOcos have been so coherent in their defense of democracy against the populist pendulum, of separatism woke to magician separatism. Mario did not know sectarianism or succumb to polarization. It was an example of cordiality in a world of thugs.
When two crises converge in Spain – that of the global liberal order founded in 1945 with that of the constitutional order agreed in 1978 – when we miss us leadership and breath, death has taken it. And yet their lessons remain. Faced with identity withdrawal, liberal courage. Against the despots of all sign, democratic militancy. Before the ravages of Cainism, the lucid and exciting defense of the common good. The liberal order will be refounded, in Spain and beyond. And the legacy of Vargas Llosa will shine like a torch, which we will pass from generation to generation with the slogan that never extinguishes.
Mario has died. His optimism lives.