The cake man is so sweet, with so many congratulations he has been receiving lately. José F. Peláez, the ‘Mr. Jose’ to the Gladys of his decorated column, won the Joaquín Romero Murube award last year and has just won the David Gistau Journalism award. «A marvel, imagine. I feel at Real Madrid winning European Cups and Leagues, scoring doubles. In fact, the Romero Murube was the first award I have ever won in my life. That is, not literary, in general. I have never won anything, man, I’m not used to it,” he confesses. Something that also happened to Diego Garrocho, when he won the Gistau in 2021. “As a work of charity for lost columnists, I already felt like the Murakami of the Gistau,” he replies with a laugh. His triumphant article is titled ‘A Progress of Closeness’, a non-“decadentist” humanist observation of technology, online shopping and where all this takes us if it does, of course, and with a lot of surrealism and the breeze of the laughter -Your column is reminiscent of a recent Hugh Grant headline: «Do you know what I miss? When the internet did not exist. -Yes. What I don’t want to be is neither nostalgic nor decadent, I can’t stand it. I am very optimistic, I love the times we live in, and I think that in general terms everything is better. But that doesn’t mean that there are things that haven’t gone better. And that freedom that we had, the anonymity, the ability to get lost in a city without having absolutely any reference, no way to be contacted or contacted, and meet a person and not know what was going to happen, and get lost in the streets… -It counts the loss of human treatment, the end of local commerce… Is there anti-capitalism 2.0 in your article or not so much? -I don’t think it goes that way. I claim rationality, common sense and humanity. You can be human with the Amazon delivery man too, if you treat him well. And you can be human with the store below. I don’t think the store below is better than Amazon. What I want is to speak to people by name. And that’s it. And not be slaves to the mobile phone and technology. I don’t want to turn out to be a man angry with the world and who wants to return to Trento and the darkness of I don’t know what and the store below. I don’t want that. But progress, if technology runs amok, becomes the opposite of progress. It becomes an anti-human thing. Everything that moves away from the human cannot be considered progress. I claim another way to progress. Standard Related News No José F. Peláez, winner of the V edition of the David Gistau Journalism Award ABC The winning article, ‘A progress of closeness’, was published in ABC on November 19, 2023 – He ironizes that technology does not I was so freaked out that from SMS to chats to audio… and “in the end we are going to invent the telephone.” But young people no longer talk on the phone, right? We have all built a character for ourselves, a kind of replicant of ourselves on networks, on WhatsApp, in our relationship with each other through screens, let’s say. So, that requires a little thinking, acting, thinking about the character. And that’s why flirting through Tinder often works. And that’s why people are disappointed. Because we are all brilliant if you give us 5 seconds to respond. And if they give us 5 minutes, I won’t even tell you. But of course, when you are face to face with a girl and she sees that you are not so bright… life is much more raw. And that is why young people are afraid to show themselves as they are. Deep down they have a pressure of milk that we have not had, which is to always behave in character. There is no actor who can do it. -“Let technology be at our service, not us at yours,” he writes. Now we get to work on the toilet, what progress! -Or the way we travel with our cell phones in front of us, the ‘Lonely Planet’ and a video you saw of an ‘influencer’ and you already know that in Seville the typical place This is it, in Dublin you have to go to Temple Bar and when you go to New York the best burger is… That makes me very nervous, not being able to be myself, not being able to explore the world with my eyes, not being able lose me The ability to improvise has been lost, which is tacitly being yourself. But it is not a criticism of the future, of progress, it does not go there. What I want is to raise my gaze from politics, from Ábalos, from Koldo, etc. We are very focused on that, as it could not be otherwise, but there are more things happening. -In a world full of opinion, what should a column have to stand out? -I don’t intend to stand out, I want to be free. I want to be me, above all. I want to convey my point of view knowing that many times it will not be liked. I don’t write to please the ABC reader. I’m not for that. Nor do I mean that I write to displease him. What I don’t want to be is a hostage to the reader. Because when you think about what the reader wants to read, I think you are a bad columnist and it shows. I’m paid, I think, to give my opinion on things. And my opinion, mine. It requires a point of courage to be yourself. I don’t want to stand out, I want to be myself. In Spain opinion is at an incredible moment but I notice fear. From the reactions on social networks, from the trolls, from the readers’ comments… You know that you can’t go here because they are going to hit you. You have to be brave. Not only in the content, but also in the theme. We must continue to denounce what is wrong, but we must look up and be chroniclers of our time. The neo-costumbrism of my article is not a minor genre, it seems to me to be the most important. Current affairs are not just political. The news is much bigger than Pedro Sánchez. -Does the columnist consider the tweeter competition? Do you think the column can be seen as demodé? – Without a doubt, and not because of Twitter but because of the column. We all know many columnists who are sometimes tweeters without space limits. Twitter is an algorithm that prioritizes some topics over others because it seeks polarization. There are many columnists who look for topics by looking at Twitter and, in the end, believe they are free, but they are talking about what the algorithm wants them to talk about. It is about bringing the newspaper to the networks, not the networks to the newspaper. It cannot be in any case that the garbage from Twitter and other networks becomes inspiration to contaminate the newspaper and turn it into another garbage. Twitter is not normal. And it has a propaganda purpose. I do see that Twitter is a threat. But not because of Twitter, but because of the columnist who chooses topics poorly.-Gistau Journalism Award. Do you feel somewhat inherited from his style? – I don’t know if my style is similar to Gistau’s, honestly. Don’t know. I wish it were. I am interested in the point of view from which he writes. The place in the world you are in. A place without hate, it is not angry, it is not bad, it does not write against, it does not write to destroy, it does not write to vindicate. He just writes as an extension of his personality. Give your opinion, that’s it. And to add more modern cultural references. He talked about movies, series, he talked about comics, ‘The Simpsons’, whatever… Can you imagine those from before talking about ‘The Simpsons’? Instead of writing in tails, write in jeans. And that interests me a lot. And its absolute independence. I write what I believe. I don’t write to please. I am not an instrument of ABC, nor of the right, nor of the Church, nor of anyone.
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