“Pajaritas de papel” by Jaime Campmany: a contribution to Spanish literary journalism

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to give the reader an overview of Jaime Campmany’s early career as a columnist who wrote literary articles he called ‘Pajaritas de papel’ (folded papers birds), which were published daily in the newspaper Arriba from 1966 to 1970. Due to the excellent quality of his literary writings within the framework of a new type of journalism being developed at the time, ‘Pajaritas de papel’ made a clear contribution to the study of literary journalism near the end of the post-war period in Spain due to his ability to reveal information in his articles at a time when the press was still suffering the impediment of censorship. For that reason and more, we consider his articles to have set a valuable precedent for the exalted status that opinion columns achieved in the decades that followed.

Keywords

• Jaime Campmany
• literary journalism
• opinion column
• history of Spanish journalism
• freedom of speech.