"Mine was a family of journalists where every meal was a real newscast; however, I wasn't going to be a journalist and, before that, I wanted to be a marine biologist". Santiago Tarín sips a Manhattan with sparkling water and watches the sunset lights filtering through the Bar's windows, while the notes of Stevie Wonder's As accompany the moment.
"Paradoxically, I believe that studying science organized my mind to end up being an effective reporter," smiles the man who also wanted to be a musician, "but I quit the precise moment they offered me to go on stage for the first time and stage fright took over me." That enormously shy boy did not give that concert and, since that day 45 years ago, he has not played the guitar again.
Born in Barcelona in 1959 and a major name in crime reporting in this country, the journalist and writer states that his life is the result "of a concatenation of coincidences that ended well." For a time, he combined science studies with journalism and ended up at Radio Nacional de España. "I jumped into crime news, as I said, by one of those coincidences. There was a shooting at the Palace of Justice and they sent me to cover it. And it went well, so they gave me more coverage of this topic which, at the time, nobody wanted to do." He, on the other hand, had a good time.
"Barcelona was a different city, very wild, and I was just over twenty years old. And suddenly I came into contact with the other side of the city, with policemen who were not what you might expect, older guys with mustaches and bad tempers, but people who were just a little older than you. Each case was a story in itself." And that's when he realized what his true vocation was, to tell stories. Something he did at RNE, at Cadena Ser, in the newspaper Ya and, from 1985, at La Vanguardia, where he became part of the investigative team and where he developed a career that has made him a true journalistic reference. Although he is not one to blow his own horn. "I have always worked as if I were a newcomer, avoiding any form of self-complacency. When you think you are good, and smarter than the people you interview, that's when you fall."
The curse and the blessing of lost steps
Crime and true crime journalism burns out. "It's true that it's the most literary, the one that allows more licenses to tell stories better, but there was a moment, in the 90s, when I couldn't take it anymore and dreamed of being able to dedicate myself to other things." It was then that a journalist friend told him something that changed his perception. "She told me: You can't be swimming against the current all the time. And those words made me understand and accept my circumstance". He sips a Manhattan and looks back at that moment when everything changed to stay the same. Or almost.
"I didn't give up doing the other things I wanted to do, but I did them outside my working hours," and thus the writer Santiago Tarín was born, with titles such as his essential Barcelona en rosa y negro, a sentimental and very dark chronicle that takes the reader through unknown and surprising episodes in the city's history; España acusa, co-written with Eduardo Martín de Pozuelo about the disappearance of Spaniards in Pinochet's Chile and Videla's Argentina, or Viaje por las mentiras de la Historia universal, where, with his elegant and refined literary style, he debunks some fallacies that have accompanied the official narrative of the world.
With Los crímenes de los pasos perdidos (AlRevés), recently published, one would say that he makes peace with that vital moment of weariness when his friend put him back in his place. Using stories from that true crime lived in the corridors of the Palace of Justice, those millions of lost steps up and down the courts, the regular weaves a canvas that narrates what our country was like. "Like a periscope looking into the past". Real stories of delinquents, counterfeiters, robbers, safecrackers, escaped prisoners, and swindlers that explain the dark side of society. A work that combines literary and journalistic value equally and that shows that, yes, for its author, coincidences turned out well. "Life plays by chance, but everything has turned out well. I am at peace."
A lover who is not affectionate
The journalist Santiago Tarín has seen one Barcelona disappear and another reborn. "My relationship with it is one of love and disillusionment, the same one you have with a lover who is not affectionate," says he who never stops loving its stories, the inner workings of a brutal and diverse port city. "That mix of seny i rauxa, of an orderly and at the same time very crazy city that I love."
But time passes and, of that "mixed and magical metropolis where Peret and Serrat coexisted" little remains. "It has become the city of no. Any idea, any project, any initiative has a systematic no in front of it, and then we'll see. And that makes it a sadder city that doesn't give the affection it receives," he reflects, finishing the last sip of his cocktail and letting himself be carried away by the notes of Natalie Cole's Don't look back.
--- What does reflect the affection it receives is our gastronomic offer. We have everything: à la carte, set menu, combo dishes, portions, tapas… in case you want to have something for dinner.
Santiago Tarín smiles. He thinks about it for a moment and decides. "I think I'm going to have a couple of portions," he determines.
And he already prepares the Nicaraguan Condega cigar he is going to smoke in what promises to be an after-dinner full of stories and anecdotes of that somber and magnetic B-side of the city.