Testimoni Públic. Política, cultura i nacionalisme

2001. Pròleg de Francesc-Marc Àlvaro, 278 pp.

What makes us write? We don’t always know it. A lot of times, the means are dark and twisted. When Agustí Colomines acts as a press columnist —another thing happens when he goes from a poet to an academic historian or to a literary critic— the answer is transparent: indignation. But what indignation are we talking about? We are referring to the one that comes out after a repeated impacts that causes a careful and detailed observation of the reality that comes embedded in the dizzying format that journalists call “news”. The blow of the news causes a major impact to the observer. He responds by setting in motion a subtle mechanism for detecting the traps that were trying to pull the wool over his eyes. As if he were a hunter of contradictions, fallacies and solemnised obviousness, Colomines displays an argument that tries to overthrow the opposite discourse without hiding the initial damage that it has done. The pedagogical aspect of his prose arises at this stage, without being a toll supplement but a smooth and fluid decanting that endows his theses with a special persistence, apart from the actuality of the aforementioned fact. All of this makes us face a columnist who tends to put his life dangerously on the line in each sentence he writes. Only with that, he already raises curiosity and amazement, and he deserves respect for it.