“Of silence and gold”, by Ivan Butel, Globe, 248 p., €22, digital €17.
Ivan Butel did not wait for the fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s death (November 20, 1975) and its already very controversial commemoration in Spain these days, to delve into the history of the democratic transition that followed. In fact, for almost twenty-five years this documentary filmmaker, born in 1968, has been passionate about this era and its tumultuous aftermath. If he was interested in it, it was not through any particular affinity with Spain but thanks to a very singular figure: Sebastian “Chano” Rodriguez, a Paralympic swimming champion who, before triumphing in the pools, spent nine years in prison for terrorism. Member of Grapo, a far-left organization engaged in very active armed struggle between 1975 and 1985, he was sentenced that year to eighty-four years of incarceration for his participation in various attacks, including the assassination of a Seville entrepreneur. He lost the use of his legs in prison following a hunger strike, before being released on parole in 1994. Amnestied in 2007, he is today, under the fictitious name of “Cha », the protagonist of a fascinating first book, a mixture of investigation, portrait, diary, historical account, fiction and things seen.
-It’s in a section of The Teama newspaper with which, when he was very young, he “learned to read, count, but also geography and a way of understanding the world” that Ivan Butel, fanatic of “all sports”discovers the existence of the swimmer. It is October 2000, the day after the Sydney Paralympic Games, and he returns to Spain, covered in glory (five gold medals). But it is also at the heart of a lively controversy. His past has just been revealed in the Spanish press; voices are being raised to demand the withdrawal of his medals. The news hits home with Butel, a former philosophy student who recently decided to swap books for the camera. Above all, she echoes the commitment (on the far left) of her parents: the journalist and writer Michel Butel (1940-2018) and Catherine Cot, who were close to Pierre Goldman and Henri Curiel, murdered in a few months apart. “As a child, I was confronted with violence: I was aware that around me, people were killing or being killed. Others were in prison »he says.
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