Roca Barea: “You have to stop being with the empire and the Inquisition all day long”

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The inquisitors are antagonists, evil-whispering henchmen, or gray sidekicks in fiction, but they have rarely been protagonists and less virtuous. In ‘The Witches and the Inquisitor’ (Espasa), Elvira Roca Barea once again goes against the current with her first published novel and gives the role of hero to the historical figure of Alonso de Salazar, a Spanish inquisitor who at the beginning of the 17th century put common sense in the process of witchcraft in the village of Zugarramurdi (Navarra). «In Spain there are these types of dystopias that give rise to characters like him being forgotten in history and that when they have been talked about it has been the other way around, in a terrible key. There is that enormous taboo that makes it necessary to always approach the Inquisition in an absolutely catastrophic key, ”recalls Roca Barea. The inquisitor not only denounced the errors committed in the subsequent trial, but also influenced the Holy Office so that reason would prevail in the future. “There was a long tradition of skepticism in Spain towards witchcraft, so really thanks to Salazar what was returned is to the traditional position of considering witchcraft as popular superstition”, summarizes the author after years of thinking about this story. This cry in favor of reason was a century ahead of what would be experienced in the rest of Europe, although this information is usually ignored in pursuit of clichés. «It is true that he found resistance in his efforts, but he was not alone. If he had been, it would have been impossible for him to get the Inquisition to modify its rules and to produce new laws in 1614, for which no one was ever convicted of the crime of witchcraft,” describes the author of the Primavera Novel Award for this year. Standard Related News No Why does Tamames hold the historic Largo Caballero (PSOE) responsible for the Civil War? César Cervera Francisco Largo Caballero, a prominent member of the communist split of the PSOE, assumed the presidency and the Ministry of War during the conflict – What did you find so interesting in Zugarramurdi? At first what aroused me was curiosity. But I was really interested in Zugarramurdi because of the figure of Alonso de Salazar. Let’s just say it was kind of a back and forth. When I read ‘The Witches’ Advocate’ it seemed unlikely to me that a man like him lived in oblivion and even that he had been so mistreated by people like Moratín. I was very struck by the contrast between what was known about him and how important his work had been. -In his case, the sentence that no one is a prophet in his land is fulfilled… -Clearly. Foreign authors were the first to notice Alonso de Salazar and began to investigate; but, of course, let’s see if you start talking about an inquisitor in Spain and you don’t do it in the key of the villain, then it’s difficult… –Where does a man as cultured and sensitive as Salazar come from? He is not an abnormal person either. It is true that he finds resistance in his efforts to show that what is said about witches is pure superstition. That all this is a lie. But he is not alone. Also Antonio de Venegas, Bishop of Pamplona, ​​helped him a lot in this endeavor. The same with the inquisitor general Bernardo de Sandoval, who supported him along with other inquisitors. If he had been completely alone, it would have been impossible for him to get the Inquisition to modify its regulations and to produce new laws in 1614. Although it is also true that he had bad times and became very lonely in Logroño. ‘The witches and the inquisitor’ Elvira Roca Barea. Espasa. Novel. 21.90 euro. 571 pages. . The same thing happened with the Laws of the Indies, which came to fruition thanks to a group of ecclesiastics with influence at court. -It is that there are many kinds of ecclesiastics. Putting them all in the same bag is a dangerous trend because it is inaccurate. Without going any further, the ecclesiastics of the Inquisition had a very bad reputation in the Church itself because it was not an institution controlled by the papacy, but by the Crown. And, furthermore, the Inquisition was a kind of internal affairs that dealt with investigating things like solicitation in the confessional… -Did the Modern Age come with the obsession with the Devil and witches? -The belief in witchcraft is a universal thing. It has always existed here or in Africa. It is part of a universal superstition. What happened in the Modern Age is that humanism became interested in the occult, the esoteric, the hermetic, from the texts that came from Byzantium, especially the texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. This gave the subject a plus of intellectual prestige and, at the same time, the interest it aroused grew. If you add to that the wars of religion and the printing press, which is capable of releasing hundreds or thousands of flyers with images of engravings that are very spectacular, well imagine all those actors acting at the same time. –Why did the Spanish and the French develop such a different sensitivity to the subject of witches? –Well, the differentiating factor is that there are religious wars in France and in Spain, no. Imagine Navarre on the other side, where there were Huguenot kings and religious conflicts. A Huguenot king who also later became a Catholic. Imagine the conflict that all this generates and how it fuels the witch hunt. If you add to that the collective hysteria… “In the same way that the solution for the Socialist Party is not to compete with Podemos, neither is Vox the solution for the right” -He points out in the book that it could be a plan of Enrique IV to destabilize the Spanish Navarre. –I have limited myself to writing a series of circumstances that occur at the same time. I have put the evidence in front of the reader’s eyes, but if such a thing existed, it is something that did not leave evidence, especially after the assassination of the King around those same dates. What is evident is that the problem that is generated in Zugarramurdi comes from the other side of the border. – Are you in favor of qualifying the persecution of witches as a femicide, a repressive action against all women who had dissenting opinions? –This has nothing to do with that, it is not against women, not at all. There were always witch men. What happens is that it always says witches and it focuses on women because, if you look at the cover of the book, there are women offering children to the devil. There you can see the enormous importance of children. –Then the famous feminist motto of ‘we are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn’? –What do you want me to tell you, they are things that are not worth paying attention to. They are so simple, so unsophisticated in terms of knowledge and reasoning. –Do the Spanish have a tendency to hunt witches, as the cliché says? –What we Spaniards have is an obsession with the Spaniards. Let’s see if we get out of autarky and look beyond the navel. The witchcraft phenomena always respond to a pattern that is repeated: a small community that has very young people, almost always children. Communities where neighborly relations are very close and so are the hatreds. That is where all the rancor, all the envy, all the bad feelings between neighbors, between relatives, etc. come to the fore. This creates, in turn, a terrible situation. In the case of Zugarramurdi, there were lynchings resulting in death and public order problems. –Tamames quoted him this week in his speech. Do you feel used as a political instrument? It seems very unfortunate to me. I respect that Mr. Tamames has decided to put his name at the service of Vox. Now, that he uses my name without my consent seems regrettable to me. And, actually, it all seems regrettable to me. The whole spectacle of one and the other creating the right to use your name, to criticize you without further investigation by way of lynching. Many will say ‘well, since it has been badly beaten by one party, it will surely come with us’, but the fact that some of them seem to me like barbarians does not mean that the others do not also seem like barbarians to me. Alonso de Salazar y Frías, illustration by Ricardo Sánchez «Risconegro Creatividad» Ricardo Sanchez –Are politicians trying to appropriate history for their benefit? –That for the right is jack, horse and king. It is a tradition to wrap oneself in the flag and appropriate the common history as if it were their own heritage. This does enormous damage. If one really loves his country, what he wants is for there to be coexistence and the greatest possible understanding, which is never produced through extremes. In the same way that the solution for the Socialist Party is not to compete with Podemos, neither is Vox the solution for the right. I have not had a political relationship with anyone except Ciudadanos until they lost their way and went astray through their own fault. That has been my only political activity. A journey in the desert that took many years to get the party out of the catacombs and then collapsed because of people who never understood why it was created. It was there to serve as a point of reflection, to introduce rationality into the debate and less convulsive ideology, not to become a majority party. MORE INFORMATION noticia No The Sack of Rome in 1527: an imperial disaster that history has cruelly attributed to the Spanish noticia No The truth about the defense of Cartagena de Indias by Blas de Lezo, the one-armed, one-eyed and one-armed hero faced with Your boss – Has France been a harmful neighbor for Spain? -The thing about being good neighbors or bad is out of place. The French have different interests, period. That is not evil, it is defending the position of each one. France at one point was forced to accept a secondary position, and when circumstances changed, the opposite occurred. If ours is especially clumsy in defending his interests, that means something is being done wrong. That being said, we will never be able to play anything if we continue to be trapped in this autarky, this sick navel. You have to look outside and stop the obsession of spending all day with the empire, the inquisition, over and over again. It’s been two centuries since that empire ended and it’s time for all its children to get out of the frame of mind.

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