Martín Caparrós arrives in the country to receive a tribute from his friends and the honorary doctor of the UBA.

It is a much-anticipated trip, meticulously organized by a group of friends of the writer and journalist Martín Caparrós , who has lived in Spain for years and is there treating his Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease, which he was diagnosed with about three years ago. The author of a solid body of work populated by essays and novels , as well as one of the most important contemporary chroniclers in the Spanish language, will arrive in the country next week and will dedicate his stay in Buenos Aires to starring in a public tribute at the Alvear Theater , receiving an honorary degree from the University of Buenos Aires , and carrying out other activities on his busy agenda.

One of the last times Caparrós was in the country was in 2022 to participate in the 25th Clarín Novela Prize ceremony , where he was a judge alongside novelist and short story writer Ana María Shua and novelist, essayist, and translator Carlos Gamerro. On that occasion, the winner was poet and lawyer Miguel Gaya, author of El desierto invisible . Two years after that trip, Caparrós revealed in 2024 that he had ALS.

For this return, a group of the writer's friends and colleagues organized a public meeting at the Alvear Theater entitled "Caparrós and Friends ." The event will take place on Thursday, July 10th at 7:00 PM, with free admission and sponsored by Grupo Clarín. On this occasion, journalists Leila Guerriero, Jorge Fernández Díaz, Cristian Alarcón, Eduardo Anguita, María O'Donnell, Martín Sivak, Reynaldo Sietecase, and Ernesto Tenembaum , among many others, will read from his work.

"We've been friends since the distant 1990s, when we used to eat revuelto gramajo at the now-defunct Hermann restaurant," Fernández Díaz recalled in an interview with Clarín. "Then life and work, and discussions and secrets, brought us together over time. It's, as Borges would say, a friendship that transcends frequent visits : Mopi was always traveling and finally settled in Madrid, where I saw him in January, venerated by Spanish intellectuals."

For the author of El secreto de Marcial , with which he won the 2025 Nadal Prize, Caparrós is "our Kapuscinski" and added: "He has written several masterpieces of the genre. Argentina owed him a tribute that was worthy of his stature. He has become a classic ."

Also participating will be writers Matilde Sánchez, Claudia Piñeiro, and Margarita García Robayo ; essayist Graciela Speranza ; photographer Dani Yako ; and psychologist Silvia Labayru , all of whom were Caparrós' classmates at the National College of Buenos Aires .

Rosario native Reynaldo Sietecase will not be at the Teatro Astral due to a trip, but he shared his appreciation for Caparrós with Clarín : " Martín is among my closest heroes. My admiration was at first reading. I entered his world through the wonderful chronicles in Larga distancia . Then came his novels and his other journalistic flourishes."

Sietecase met Caparrós in the midst of a dispute: "Fate and chance, those two blind sages, allowed me to meet him in a newsroom at the end of the nineties. And I think our first exchange was a fight , as a brand new editor in Buenos Aires, I had cut one of his articles. I didn't know it, but I was doing a master's degree, forced to cut where nothing was unnecessary. He never let me down when it came to important matters. He was always exquisite with words, a rigorous journalist, a brave, ethical, ironic, and provocative man. A knight-errant convinced of fighting giants and windmills with the same fervor. He was generous with his time and his guidance. Although with him, conversation is never enough. He is a friend and teacher. I am one of his improvised and loyal squires . Near or far, always ready to accompany him in his next battles."

Leila Guerriero , the great Spanish-language columnist, also came to Caparrós through her book Larga distancia (Long Distance) . So, if a young person were to think about where to approach his work, they would think of that book: " He's one of the most important Spanish-speaking authors . He has a truly unique command of language, and his prose has a very singular musicality. If I look specifically at his nonfiction, I'd say he's spent his life chronicling the most diverse realities on the planet. That speaks to an ambitious author who understands the capabilities of his tool," she considered.

For the author of La llamada , winner of the Critics' Prize at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair, " whenever you read Martín you see something in a way you hadn't seen before . His point of view, his gaze, is impressive. On the other hand, he is an extremely critical author, he knows how to be acidic when he needs to be acidic, he avoids complacency with the victim, he is very close to the realities he tells of, but at the same time he knows how to put his camera where it should be ," she added.

Two days earlier, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) will award him an honorary doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters. The ceremony will take place on Tuesday, July 8, at 6:00 p.m., in Room 108 of the campus located at 480 Puan Street . The university, where Caparrós attended high school, considered him "an emblematic figure of narrative journalism and contemporary literature in Spanish."

The University of Buenos Aires (UBA) considered that "through his narrative journalism, Caparrós has brought to light the stories of ordinary people and denounced profound social inequalities in Latin America and around the world. His chronicles and essays address urgent humanitarian, political, and collective memory issues with rigor and sensitivity, always seeking new avenues to break new ground."

Writer and editor, Paula Pérez Alonso faced the challenge of editing Caparrós many times. And the first of those experiences was, again this title, with Larga distancia . She recalls to Clarín : "I don't remember exactly when I met him, but I knew him well when, in 1991, Juan Forn commissioned Larga distancia for Biblioteca del Sur and asked me to edit it. It was one of the first books I had to edit at that company, and Caparrós of all people! I didn't know what to point out, what to suggest to him. The texts were impeccable, perfect for the register in which they were told, all great figures, crucial moments in history and yet enigmatic, like the one about Che in La Higuera. I think I suggested something to him for the one about Anatole Saderman, I don't remember if he took it."

The bond between Pérez Alonso and Caparrós grew closer over time: "I started seeing Mopi outside of publishing, at Dani Yako's, at lunches or dinners where Adriana Lestido would also be, or at Rafa Calviño's, always the same friends. We got along very well, that affection grew over the years ," he recalled.

And at that crossroads, the personal and the professional, she continued publishing her books: " It was always a great joy to publish her books. From Boquita to El Interior and Todo por la patria, the first novel in the Pibe Rivarola series, and also the excitement of reissuing La voluntad (the best portrait of the militancy of the seventies and unique in its register) in paperback (in 5 volumes: where to make the cuts?) and then in trade with the 3 that Norma had originally published. Each book an event ," she concluded.

The event at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) will be attended by Ricardo Gelpi, rector of the University of Buenos Aires; Ricardo Manetti, dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters; and writer and journalist Daniel Guebel, who will deliver the eulogy.

If Caparrós was not an undergraduate student at the UBA it was because he went into exile early . That's why he graduated in History from the University of Paris and lived in Europe during the last dictatorship . There and here, in a succession of trips and stays, he wrote and published more than 40 books, including novels, chronicles and essays, translated into multiple languages ​​. Among his most recognized works are La Voluntad (1997), La historia (1999), El interior (2005), Los Living (Herralde Novel Prize, 2011), El Hambre (internationally award-winning essay, 2014), Ñamérica (Prix Roger Caillois, 2024) and Antes que nada (Before Anything Else) (2024).

But before these books, even before exile, in her youth, writer Matilde Sánchez, editor-in-chief of Ñ magazine, recalled a friendship that spanned many decades. "I met Martín Caparrós at a mass gathering in early 1988 at his home , a French-style apartment on Las Heras Avenue, which seemed too stately for the owner's age, although it looked somewhat battered. Those of us present had been invited to participate in the magazine Babel , which Caparrós and his friend Jorge Dorio had founded at a table in the Richmond confectionery shop on Florida Street. The duo, inseparable by then, had already been featured on the radio program "Belgrano's One-Night Dreams," and they were something like the heroes of a generation. I always thought the handlebar mustaches were a deliberate reference to The Three Musketeers—and that the third, absent one, had perhaps been killed."

The anecdote continued: "Reinforced by the aura of heading the Shanghai literary group –of evanescent existence and global marketing avant la lettre–, what stood out in Martín in those youthful years was the absolute certainty about his destiny as a writer . He was already fully embarking on it and without hesitation in going backwards, since the publication of Ansay o los infortunios de la gloria , his first novel, while all of us –this team of authors, students and young university professors, such as Daniel Guebel, Daniel Link, Sergio Bizzio, Daniel Samoilovich, Sergio Chejfec and Graciela Montaldo , and a few journalists (I think I remember María Moreno that time)–, in the best of cases, were composing the image of an author and cultivating criticism."

Matilde Sánchez says that Babel was of enormous value in those years: " Perhaps the last book magazine with a position in favor of literary autonomy , as understood by the Manifesto for an Independent Literature. In other words, the magazine was against the local remnants of social realism, embodied by Osvaldo Soriano, and the initiatives of the publishing market, which was beginning to actively promote a more straightforward literature marked by the absence of intra-literary references. Although this polemic contained numerous misunderstandings, it was fertile in exceptional stories . Babel passionately contributed to consecrating César Aira and left an unforgettable literary dispute between Tomás Eloy Martínez and Alan Pauls."

Caparrós is a professor-at-large at Cornell University, an honorary professor at the University of Alcalá, a regular columnist for El País , and has received numerous awards for his journalistic and literary work . The King of Spain Prize, the Platinum Konex Award, the María Moors Cabot Award, and the Ortega y Gasset Award top a much longer list.

Today, when Don José Hernández would have turned 189—God forbid!—I want to offer you the beginning of “The True Life of José Hernández as Told by Martín Fierro.” pic.twitter.com/1WYgnsAu4p

— Martín Caparrós (@martin_caparros) November 10, 2023

As expected, Caparrós will also present two books in Buenos Aires . His poem, The True Life of José Hernández (told by Martín Fierro) (Random House), and a short essay entitled Without God , soon to be published.