Vargas Llosa: It is idiotic to want to abolish Spanish as an official language

The Nobel Prize in Literature has established plans by the Spanish government to suppress Spanish as a vehicular language in the new education law.

The suppression of Spanish as a vehicular language in Spanish education is “limitless idiocy”, said Mario Vargas Llosa during the presentation of the books The reality of a writer, Dialogues in Peru and Parallel Vias: Vargas Llosa y Savater, three volumes that they treasure their complete leftovers.

“It is limitless idiocy to want to abolish Spanish, an absolute nonsense that makes me laugh,” said the Spanish-Peruvian writer on Wednesday 18-N.

The Spanish government wants to approve the general budgets of the state and for this reason it wants to guarantee the vote of the Catalan republicans and to agree with Bildu (a political independence group), parties that “want to put an end to the Spaniards”, reflects Vargas Llosa.

“What turns out then is that Spain does not have an official language. And what happens to the 500 million people who speak Spanish? How do you explain to Mexicans that it is the country where they speak the most?” author of The city and the dogs.

It is “nonsense”, said the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, before considering that “Spanish is not replaced by Biblical, Catalan or Basque, regional languages ​​that give presence, but not to the detriment of Spanish”.

“The RAE must be categorical and defend the presence of the Spaniards,” said Vargas Llosa. “If you count it, he is ashamed of others: it is not to cry but to laugh out loud,” he added.

“Complete leftovers”

The author of Conversation in the Cathedral made these considerations on the suppression of Castilian as a vehicular language in the new law on education in the last part of the press conference to present those three books, which served to enrich “the vision” of his work. .

Some texts published as “Sobras Completas” (Triacastela publishing house), a title that Fernando Savater invented many years ago, “to get rid of a young publisher who always telephoned him at siesta time, asking him for a book”, he explained in the press conference telematics José Lázaro, promoter of these works and author of Vías Paralelas: Vargas Llosa y Savater.

“The reality of a writer” collects the lessons in English that in 1988 Vargas Llosa gave in the United States on Latin American literature, Borges and six of his first novels.

This work, unpublished in Spanish, offers a first literary autobiography of Vargas Llosa and describes his personal experience as a novelist. “It was interesting to see these lessons that I had completely forgotten,” adds the writer.

The second book, Dialogues in Peru, collects 38 conversations with Vargas Llosa carried out by various Peruvian journalists between 1964 and 2019.

Revised and approved by him, it offers a splendid introduction to the life and work of the great Peruvian novelist and at the same time a personal testimony that can almost be considered as “oral memories,” said Lázaro.

“Many of the interviews that appear had not been read”, revealed the author of Pantaleón y las visitaras, who believes that many “are very interesting for the political, economic and geographical details that Peruvian journalists added when writing the interview “.

Finally, the third book, Vías parallelas: Vargas Llosa y Savater, is an essay in which a surprising parallel is established between the biographical-intellectual trajectories of these two writers.

“I admire Fernando Savater”, said the Nobel, who considers him “an independent intellectual, a committed writer, threatened by ETA that he had to leave San Sebastián”, a decision taken with “serenity”.

The author of La fiesta del Chivo also pointed out that Savater “never stopped writing, knowing he was risking his life”.

In its pages appear their ideological origins, their respective crises in their thirties and their stages of maturity. A dialogue with his writings, articulated with direct interviews, which shows in a comparative way the profound meaning of two constantly evolving thoughts.

Vargas Llosa is delighted that Lázaro had this idea of ​​establishing a parallel between the two writers “until he was able to give a very clear and consistent idea of ​​the things we both think, defend and criticize”.