Pedro Simón: "I went to the last prize with a tie left to me by a bus friend; the king wore the same"

• ANA MARIA ORTIZ

  Madrid

• PHOTOGRAPHS BY CARLOS RUIZ

  Contumaz Studio

Updated Thursday,12October2023-00:16

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"A journey that includes many maps, some blowout wheels and endless roads." This is how Pedro Simón describes Las Malas Notas (Espasa publishing house), a compilation of his best opinion articles and reports. From accompanying Pilar, a 42-year-old terminally ill woman, in her last days in palliatives, to the miracle of little Javier: "We have a heart for your son."

You know that in the newsroom there is a screen that measures the clicks that each news item has and how many subscribers it is making. Your themes are always first. I know you hate this gadget. I do not like this device because, without wanting to compare the journalist with a surgeon or an air traffic controller, I cannot imagine the latter two with their work assessed and measured in every minute, in every second. I can't imagine them hearing from the audience at every moment: "Oops, you're doing well." And after five seconds: "Oops, you're operating regularly." I think it's impossible to do your best. I am not interested in the outcome of what I do, I am interested in what I do. It also happens to me with books. I try not to know how many have been sold. It caught their attention in the editorial because every Friday they have data. "Peter, we're going to tell you how many you've sold." "Don't even think about it." "Do you forgive?" You do your job, you leave your report there, you leave your book there and you have to defend yourself, you have to get with the next job. I have a lot of ego, of course. I think you can't be a journalist otherwise, you can't leave with a signature ahead of you without having an ego. What happens is that I try to fight my ego because I already consider myself enough asshole to be aware of whether what I do is liked by many or liked by few. I believe that truth and beauty are always very close together, they are like two traveling companions. Whenever we detect in a story something that has to do with the truth – and I mean that it has to do with the things that take away our sleep, with our fears, with our burdens, with our pains, with our shit – I think we are interested. And I guess people appreciate that you take them on a trip to places they often can't go or don't dare to go. I like that frame in the reports that is the type or the guy who gets up, who, despite his darkness and his shit, sheds a little light on the guy who is reading. For me it is important that the reports have some beacon, even if the raw material is painful, but that they always end with some light. If there is no light, history does not interest me.And why do you like to write about these topics? I guess I'm obsessed with death, I guess I'm obsessed with illness, with the unstitched, with the alone, with myself. I'm interested in this as a literary raw material because I think that's where people measure themselves. People measure themselves when bad things come, not when everything is partying, prizes, joy and confetti. And the third point of view, the protagonists, why do they lend themselves? Many people need to talk. There are those who go to the psychologist and there are those who end up in the newsroom of a newspaper. You need to be heard and, as psychologists do, for yours to be put black on white, to be given meaning. Somehow, catharsis begins the moment you share what you didn't dare.

It is not healthy to put the protagonists of your reports in your life. If not there would be a backpack of paranormal phenomena at home a little unlivable

Those of us who look with envy at his themes on that screen wonder: where does he get these stories? The journalist is a junkie who lives off his camels. And if our camels do not pass us merca, the monkey enters us, and we are fatal, and we begin to sweat, and we do not sleep, and there is no one to put up with us. I already have 52 tacos, I have already met many camels for 30 years: judges, therapists, NGOs, social workers, doctors, nurses, hospital guards, the occasional civil guard, etc... People who handle pain, people who live in a shipyard where lives are repaired... Then, when one day, because they are always aware of what their junkie needs, they tell you: "Hey, I have received this consignment of drugs, are you interested?"; You, as a good addict, go for it. Of course, it is important to treat the merchandise well and respect the camel, because if you do not appear in a river with a chain on your feet and you run out of stories. Well, for as in life itself. On Sunday, Khatisa, who is a girl who was studying the EVAU in the Cañada Real during the Filomena [the historic snowfall of January 2021], without electricity or heating, was eating at below zero, and now she is a champion who is studying a wonderful university career. There are people with whom you maintain the bond, as it can be with Khatisa and there are people you do not want to know anything about because you should not. Half a year passes and he wants you to retell his story. You've already told it, you can't do anything else, you're just a journalist. And I don't think it's healthy to put the protagonists of your reports in your life either. I already say that there are exceptions, but I think the healthy thing is to leave behind, to look forward. If not, there would be a backpack of paranormal phenomena at home a little unlivable. There are extraordinary stories you know that you can't tell. Yes, of course, the best. One of them would be the equivalent of if the children of a murdered ETA and the ETA who killed him fell in love after the attack. Don't you suffer from not being able to count these things? It's very angry, in fact. I, Gonzalo Suárez, who is my boss at the newspaper, many times I have a very good story in my hands and I don't want to tell it until I'm almost going to do it because there are many times that they fall apart. Once, I was in the newspaper, when there were landlines in the newspaper, and the phone rang. I took him and he said: "Hello, I'm the Gitanillo [one of those involved in 11-M] and I think the time has come to give an interview showing my face." Of course, imagine, I got a little nervous. I asked him, we talked for a while and the uncle told me he wasn't kidding me. I asked him for the phone and he said: "No, no, I'll keep yours, I'll call you when we go to do it." I didn't know any more. I never told Gonzalo.

I am much more proud of the management of my failures, falls, illnesses and evils than of my awards.

There are two anecdotes I'd like you to share with readers. The first is from your beginnings, when you were in 'La Opinión de Zamora'. A joke you played on an intern. Yes, yes. There had been a tremendous event, I believe a murder in a town of Zamora. The intern went to eat and said to Roberto Centeno and me: "Hey, if that phone rings, take it and keep the number of the man who is going to call, I'm waiting." She went to eat and I said to Roberto, "Let's play a joke on him." We took a piece of paper and I put the prefix Zamora, 980, and then six random numbers and left it on his table. The girl came to eat and Roberto and I looked at her. You're going to see now that he fits with laughter. "They've called you, there's the phone." Then we see that the girl calls, starts talking, starts asking questions and takes notes compulsively for an hour. And the other one and I looked at each other saying, "He's kidding us." When he hangs up, the other and I: "What, what, what?" And she: "What about what?" We said, "Look, we've made this joke on you." And he says, "It's impossible." "Why?" Because he was the uncle of the murdered woman." He had put a random number and it was that of the uncle of the murdered woman. I freaked out. That day we bought a lottery, we threw a pool and obviously we did not get anything, but it made us think about this chance. The second is when he was asked for a column on the anniversary of the Lisbon Atlético-Real Madrid Champions League final, which you went to with your children. Luisfer López, who was then head of Sports, told me: "Hey, you could write something about a year after the defeat in Lisbon." "Damn the grace it makes me, but, well, okay." I started writing rough and went to eat. "Don't worry, when you come back you have the model made," Luisfer told me. I came back from eating, I got on the page and they had put a vertical photo. Suddenly I see that and I screamed. It was a picture of my son Mateo, who was nine years old at the time and had been with me in Lisbon but had sat with my brother-in-law because we had entrances in different areas. Luisfer told me that he simply asked Marca for a taco of photos of Atleti fans, that they gave him 50 photos, that of the 50 he was hesitating between five or six and that of the five or six he took this photo in which my brother-in-law and my son were, but that since it was a tiny vertical photo, They removed my brother-in-law and put the little face of a child, which was a little face of grief. We keep that photo, it's a super nice photo. My son, fuck. There on the page. Unbeknownst to me. Chance again.Why have you titled it The bad grades? Because we all have bad grades sometimes, because there are exemplary people with bad grades, because I abhor that exemplarity that demands purity and that requires you not to commit a mistake in your life. And because it has a double meaning. Bad because many stories are caught by evil and pain too. In the prologue you say that it is a journey that includes maps, some blowout wheels and many roads. What are the wheel blowouts of your career? I am much more proud of the management of my failures, falls, illnesses and evils than of my awards. Prouder than the APM award. Or the King of Spain. Or Ortega y Gasset. Or to be a finalist of the Gabo, etc. Because I think that's what happiness is about. The better you manage fucked up things, the more chances you have of being happy. That said, I would say that of the things of which less thisAnd proud I would be of a time when I was in moments when I believe that a journalist does not have to be. Juan Soto Ivars spoke very well about this the other day. An example: once, when I was 24 years old, I was sent to talk to parents who had lost two children in a fire that day. I went, talked to them and surely hurt them. I don't think it makes any sense for a journalist to be there at such an abrasive moment. That was published on the cover of La Opinión de Zamora. I'm not at all proud of this kind of thing. Then, of the mistakes that I can commit, which I will surely continue to commit, as long as they do not have to do with fraud or with the intention of screwing anyone's life, because what is going to be done.

I have shirts from 25 years ago and, as I am not to throw, until they have a broken or something I will continue to wear them

How does someone with all the awards you mentioned come to the newsroom with a Mazinger Z t-shirt or one of Los Chunguitos with the legend "Give me poison, I want to die". Well, that's probably why my wife tells me: "How ridiculous you are, you still think you're 25 years old." As they enter me, I put them on. And since I'm not pulling, until I see that they have a broken or something like that I'll keep wearing them. I have clothes at home from 20 years ago, I'm not exaggerating. My wife says, "But how can you not throw that away?" They taught me that if things aren't broken, they don't throw them away. I witness a ceremony in which he was given an award and for which he borrowed an American from a colleague. Do you already have one of your own? I bought one advised by my brother Antonio Lucas, who told me about a specific brand that he has very pintonas. And there it is, hanging in the closet. Unique and only for very important occasions... Yes, there was a time when I asked Lucas for his jackets to collect prizes and the last prize I collected was with a tie left to me by a friend of mine, an EMT bus driver, whose name is Javier and he is from Betis. It was not an EMT tie, it was a very nice tie, which, by the way, I think was exactly the same as the one worn by the King. Then I told Javier and he was very happy: the King also has a bus driver friend or buys ties in the same place as you.

'Las malas notas', by Pedro Simón, is already on sale (Espasa). You can buy it here

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