Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte says that he shares José Saramago’s Iberian vision and regrets that Filipe II did not move the capital from Spain to Lisbon: “We would be a world power.”
There is no need for the interview regarding his most recent book in Portugal, A History of Spain, to go far for Arturo Pérez-Reverte to reaffirm his position as an Iberian: “It is an anomaly that Portugal and Spain are not the same state. ” However, he considers that, in view of the current situation in Spain, “this separation is fortunate for the Portuguese because they are far from the political, economic and social disaster that Spain has become”.
Pérez-Reverte was the most widely read writer in Spain in the last year thanks to this A History of Spain and the novel Sidi, but considers that he feels no responsibility to be number one in his country: “I have little responsibility because it is a situation that I didn’t look. I write and it’s good to have a lot of readers since I started publishing books thirty years ago. Although there are about three dozen titles, I am a professional and there is no moral commitment on my part in relation to what I do, only in the professional aspect. ”
Read more in Portuguese at Diário de Notícias.