Alvaro Vega |
Córdoba (EFE).- The filmmaker Manuel Lamarca (Córdoba, 1974) exhibits in the documentary ‘Guerra Alfonso. The man behind the politician’ the vision of the one who was the protagonist of the Transition from the vice presidency of the first governments of Felipe González and the leadership of the PSOE, in almost ten hours of interview in which there was “no veto, Alfonso Guerra has loaned with total solvency.
In the work, awarded at the Pacific International Film Festival of Canada, Guerra is exhibited for 155 minutes “with total kindness, without shying away from any question and it has been an artistic work carried out in full freedom.”
Lamarca, professor of Audiovisual Media at the Mateo Inurria School of Arts and Crafts in Córdoba, is happy in a conversation with EFE because he believes “he sincerely has given himself body and soul and, in that aspect, I have been very lucky, he is a first person testimony.
In his opinion, “the documentary will be much more important, if possible, in fifty years as a testimony, not only Alfonso Guerra as a man, but also of the democratic history of our country.”
Guerra reflects on the title of the work at the beginning, describing it as “polysemic”, since “it can be interpreted in different ways: we are going to see what has not been seen because politics dominated it and that man was behind it.” of the politician, an interpretation that he would not accept. The man has not been behind the politician, the man has been ahead », he specified.
In the edited part, all the raw material has been deposited at the request of its director and the protagonist in the Spanish Film Library and is in the process of doing the same in the Pablo Iglesias Foundation available to researchers, the politician addresses controversial issues of the Transition.
The mistake about the role of the king and the GAL
He acknowledges that at first it was feared that Juan Carlos I “was going to be the continuity of Franco and we were wrong, like all the democratic opposition”, and that on 23-F he “supported democracy”, to the point of being a “guarantee of continuity of democracy.
He accuses of lying who implicated the Government in the GAL, for which several members of the Executive and their entourage were convicted of exercising state violence against ETA, a matter in which he claims to see “very dark” things in the Court’s ruling Supreme.
In the case of his brother Juan, whose role was questioned for exerting influence from an office in the Andalusian Government Delegation without having any institutional position, he says that eighteen proceedings were opened against him by a judge who “was willing to do things outside of the law” and that they were all either archived or ended in acquittal.
The only moment in which the relaxed gesture of the politician seems to change is when he is asked about his resignation as vice president, which he justifies when he sees the loss of confidence on the part of Felipe González as a result of a letter he sent him, despite which he affirms that “it was not a hard day for me, it was a happy day, I wanted” to leave.
admiration and challenge
Manuel Lamarca, a doctor in Audiovisual Communication and Advertising from the Complutense University of Madrid, was concerned about undertaking the document because he was born in 1974, the year of the Suresnes Congress, he remembers that he grew up in the 80s and 90s with the socialist governments of Felipe González, in which Alfonso Guerra was vice president and “the truth is that there is almost a sentimental relationship.”
His interest in politics and Guerra, who “has always been the person who has interested me the most and has been linked to the world of culture, poetry and a lover of cinema”, led him to devise the documentary and propose it to him, something that it cost him three years, “less than I thought.”
In 2014 he published a book of poems and had “the audacity to send it (dedicated) with a personal letter to the Pablo Iglesias Foundation”, and Guerra responded in his own handwriting thanking him.
That contact helped him to propose the project years later, with a better reception than in the production companies, where he had “little response”, but since “I did not want to leave the project on paper, I made the decision to self-finance it and produce it myself”, he has explained.
Two weeks of interview
The result of this effort are the 155-minute documentary, recorded over two weeks in March 2022 at the Hotel Los Lebreros in Seville, where Guerra talks about his strong bond with his parents, because “they were both authentic people”, and the hard blow he received with the death of his 29-year-old sister, when he was 10, who was very fond of movies, the only exception to a happy childhood, in which he was very responsible.
“I didn’t play until I studied exactly what I had to study,” Guerra says, admitting that it hurt him to be told that “this child is going to get us out of poverty.”
He also narrates how he met Felipe González, organizing an act of rejection of a conference by Fraga at the Law School of Seville, of the duality that he played with him, with “very complementary aspects, which are not synonymous”, and of the way in which the one that reading Antonio Machado at the age of 16 led him to discover Pablo Iglesias, whom he quoted in an article in ‘La Vanguardia’ about a Second Republic in retreat, almost on its way to exile, with the Government installed in Barcelona.
“Machado guided the path of my life, since then I have been very Machado,” the former vice president confesses at one point in the documentary.
The Canadian award has not been the only recognition for Manuel Lamarca in recent weeks. His book ‘Friedrich Wilhem Murnau’ (Cátedra, 2022) has received the Film Book Award at the XXXV gala of the Association of Film Writers of Andalusia (ASECAN).
