From Goebbels to Rita la Cantaora: the news that shocked us the most and how we told them

Mónica Arrizabalaga recounts that, while preparing the book together with Federico Ayala, she was surprised that “there were things in today’s ‘new journalism’ that we think are modern, but that, in reality, had already been done long before.” She gives an example: «In 1929, a reporter from ‘La Crónica’, Josefina Carabias, posed as a waitress at the Hotel Palace to tell how her workers lived. She was cleaning with them eight days. What differences are there? Few. Great reporting was good before and it is now.” Ayala and Arrizabalaga remember that the manager even found Carabias’s face familiar, but fortunately he did not realize that she was the famous journalist, who scrubbed floors and followed orders from her boss like one of the others. “You know what your obligations are. If you’re told to do something that’s none of your business, you say you’re sorry, but it’s not possible. I tell you this because there are clients who believe that twenty percent gives them the right to everything, “he warned the editor. This is just one of the fifty reports that the person in charge of Documentation and Archives and the journalist from the Culture section of ABC have included in ‘The Forgotten Gazette’ (Libros.com), a work in which they present a very complete mosaic of articles and images to bring the reader closer to the most important and curious events of the 19th and 20th centuries, just as they were told then. « The book is a tribute to journalism, newspaper archives and history, to make us feel proud of our work. Of course, we know that there are miseries in the press, as in all professions, but we have not hidden them, “says Ayala. From Francisco Silvela to Yagüe The co-author refers, for example, to the parliamentary Time.news written by Julio Burrell for ‘El Heraldo de Madrid’, in 1892, before the session had been held. An article so accurate that the President of the Government, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, and the deputies Francisco Silvela and Emilio Castelar, did not hesitate to congratulate him. Ayala also speaks of the large number of hoaxes spread during the Civil War and the dictatorship, such as the one in 1936 that announced the assassination of Franco at the hands of a civil guard; or the one who assured, on the contrary, that he had won 900,333 pesetas in La Quiniela. Just as scandalous was the news that ‘informed’ that Juan Yagüe had taken his own life: «It can be confirmed that one of the traitors committed suicide when he saw the forces of the Republic in front of Córdoba. We don’t miss it. Suicide, on such occasions, is cowardice, and traitors are usually cowards,” read the Madrid ABC in 1936, despite the fact that the general died in 1952. Arrizabalaga recalls others: “The one about the famous Republican bandit of the that the hoax spread that he had become a lieutenant in Franco’s troops. Or the fire at the Prado Museum that Mariano de Cavia invented, in 1891, to criticize the Government of Cánovas del Castillo and the previous ones for the state of the art gallery». The two authors have divided the book as if they were sections of a newspaper, in order to review information from all areas. They have called them, in fact, as some old newspapers did: ‘ Echoes from here ‘ (national), ‘ Around the world ‘ (international), ‘ Sensational Crimes ‘ (events), ‘ Champion ‘ (sports), ‘ Pigtails and pythons ‘ (of bulls), ‘ Mesa y revuelta ‘ (advertising, obituaries and hobbies) and ‘ Art and letters ‘ (cultural). In this last chapter they interview Rita la Cantaora, the Jerez native who became famous for the many popular expressions she starred in. “I have ‘lived’ like a queen and now I am poorer than rats,” she confessed to ‘Estampa’. From Hitler to Alfonso XIII Ayala and Arrizabalaga do not forget historical chronicles such as that of the attack against Alfonso XIII, in 1906, which became the first great journalistic exclusive in Spain, with the overwhelming photo of Mesoneros Romanos sold to ABC. From the testimony of Ramón J. Sender in Casas Viejas during the brutal repression carried out by the socialist government in 1933. And the interviews with Hitler, in 1923; to King Alfonso XIII, a month after leaving for London when the Republic was established, and to Goebbels, with the rise to power of the Nazis in Germany. The latter, signed by Chaves Nogales in the newspaper ‘Now’, added a previous description in which he charged against the character: «He is a ridiculous guy, with his little trench coat and his crooked leg, who has spent ten years being a laughing stock of liberal journalists. MORE INFORMATION The paternity of the Chaves Nogales phenomenon «From the 19th century until now, it is impossible to do historical research or understand what has happened in the past without going to the press. When someone is interested in the Second World War, for example, they cannot ignore that, between 1939 and 1945, there were thousands of newspapers around the world that told the battles as they happened. Many of those news do not have a place in the manuals or in the encyclopedias, but they do in the newspapers and they are important, “says Ayala.