Madrid (EFE).- The Spanish journalist Jesús Martínez Fernández thanked this Wednesday the King of Spain Award for International Cooperation and Humanitarian Action that he will receive tomorrow from Felipe VI, since it is “a recognition of neighborhood work, local journalism, which has always been the younger brother of great reporting”.
The work “J’accuse! The looting of Rosario’s house”, published in Frontera Digital, of Spain, by Martínez Fernández, with photography by Marc Javierre-Kohan, tells the story of a wrong eviction, the one suffered by Rosario, 99, two years ago, when a judicial commission mistakenly entered his house and took all his belongings.
“The mistake above all is that they emptied her house and to this day she is still waiting for her belongings to be returned, especially her most emotional belongings, such as the photograph of her husband who died 60 years ago or the diary she wanted to leave behind. to their grandchildren. They took all this away and no one admits the blame and no one acknowledges whose mistake it was,” the journalist recounted in an interview with EFE.
Rosalía has two children, one of them is the one who takes her case, “but to this day there has been no change since the day the event occurred. And no one has apologized to him for anything.”
“I am talking to the son, she is 99 and a half years old and is fine, but with her own ailments and still very hurt. She tries to ensure that everything that is said to her is positive so as not to mention the disaster, ”says the winner, who will try to convey tomorrow to Felipe VI the situation of the protagonist as her son has requested.
The “drama of Rosario”, King of Spain Award for International Cooperation
The award-winning work “is a slap on the wrist for all parties,” says Martínez Fernández, and “to the extent that I could I made a version of ‘I accuse’ by the French Émile Zola with the idea of adapting it to a format that was denunciation knowing that none of the accused admits that they are guilty”.
“Everyone is to blame and they should at least give him back, since the startup error is not going to be repaired, what is his,” he says.
The idea for this work arose when Martínez Fernández contacted Rosario’s granddaughter after seeing the event to offer to rewrite the diary she lost in the eviction, which at least “would be a way to recover the memory she lost.”
For the journalist, the happy ending of this story “would be moral reparation”, because “I don’t know if she will recover things at this point, but I hope that this woman will find a solution while she is alive. Basically it is that the judge says ‘yes I was wrong’, that nothing happens”.
The King of Spain International Journalism Awards, the most prestigious in the Ibero-American sphere, celebrate their 40th anniversary. They were created by the EFE Agency and the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (Aecid).