Pilar del Río's voice lights up every time she mentions José Saramago, her deceased husband, whom she portrays in the intimacy of his house in Lanzarote in the book "The Intuition of the Island", in which, she assures in an interview with Efe in Bogotá, she gives testimony of something she witnessed.
Del Río visited Bogotá as part of the commemorations of the centenary of Saramago (1922-2010), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1998) and the Camões Prize (1995).
The Spanish journalist (Castril, 1950) shared more than two decades of her life with the Portuguese author and together they lived 17 years in the town of Tías, in Lanzarote, "an island that I had never thought of in my life, which I discovered (...) and became a kind of state of happiness."
"It is the beginning of the world, it is the end of the world, it is beauty and above all intimacy," she says about that piece of land where Saramago wrote some of his greatest works, such as "Blindness" and "Seeing".
Testimony
"The Intuition of the Island" (Alfaguara) is, in Del Río's words: "to give testimony of something that I witnessed, but I try not to be inside the book ever. It is as if the journalist was there and tells it. The journalist is not the protagonist of anything."
But that testimony was written, then, by a particular pressure: that of the workers of A Casa, the house museum of Lanzarote where she lived with Saramago, who insisted that she tell in a book the anecdotes of that home that she told them.
"They even threatened me that I had to write because if I died of coronavirus no one else was going to know what had happened in the house. So it was very funny because they had a burden of insistence, but also a desire to know that what had happened in the house would continue to be kept alive," she explains.
In that sense, the process was exciting, because it occurred in "a fortunate moment, because now they are letters for readers of José Saramago who want to know what the day-to-day life of José Saramago was like."
The joy of detail
The Spanish journalist, who also chairs the Saramago Foundation to keep the writer's legacy alive, assures that the writing was done with joy, because in "The Intuition of the Island" she reflects the things that happened in A Casa.
The idea of all this is that the people who read the text feel comforted, because the stories they find there are "like love letters for José Saramago readers."
"It is a book written from joy and with love for reading, readers, with love for curiosity. With love for the value that books offer us, which make us bigger," says the journalist.
One of the particularities is that, despite being herself one of the protagonists of her story, she took her role as a journalist very seriously, so her name does not appear in the stories because "journalists cannot be part of the information they make, they cannot be in the chronicle."
Del Río sought to write "the best chronicle with the best style" and tried to relate what she lived from "different perspectives", but, she insists, "without appearing".
"That is what I did, I tried to apply what I had learned in journalism school and I tried to do it with joy and devotion. With devotion for the people who passed through the house, for the stories, for the writers, for the artists, for the politicians, for the anonymous, for the artists, for all of them I profess affection," she says.
Immediately afterwards she says: "It is an act of recognition to Lanzarote, to José Saramago, to friends and to the world of José Saramago."
Creativity in Lanzarote
In the book, Del Río ventured to explain the context in which Saramago wrote his best texts in Lanzarote, as is the case of "Cain", "The Elephant's Journey", "Seeing" and "Blindness".
"I explain what are the circumstances for which he wrote that book from 'Blindness' to 'Halberds, halberds' passing through 'Cain' (...) I explain what those books are due to, why he wrote them, in what state of mind," she says.
She adds: "I try to do it with joy, I try to mix the intellectual with the moral man who expresses himself and with the everyday being who enjoys with his dogs, with cooking or with a good glass of white wine."
The book includes the Universal Charter of Duties and Obligations of Persons, a document inspired by a speech given in 1998 by the Nobel laureate.
"The Universal Declaration of Human Rights needs the symmetry of the Universal Declaration of Human Duties and that is up to us. If we want to be humiliated, denigrated, have work, have a house or not have work, let's continue like this, if we assume our responsibility maybe the world will be better and that is what Saramago said, we assume it," she concludes.
