The Belgrano diary

Usually, when we want to understand the past of nations ---what the pretentious call "historical memory"--- we focus our gaze on (very heavy) volumes about a specific time period, we devour tons of documentaries on the subject in question, and so on. Unfortunately, too often we neglect the best tool to approach the past of the collective imagination; literature, a magnifying glass perhaps not so photographic in terms of recounting facts, but much more inspiring in terms of understanding a certain Zeitgeist. There are very rare occasions, I think of literary totems like War and Peace and The Charterhouse of Parma, where the recounting of certain historical facts is masterfully hybridized with narrative resources, in order to establish the perfect cocktail. All this cheap critical theory comes to mind because of a small podcast work of art with the qualitative mark of the London Review of Books that has stolen my heart (and cured my brain) for many days: The Belgrano Diary.

Directed and narrated by the great narrator-essayist Andrew O'Hagan (enjoy his wonderful Scottish accent!), The Belgrano Diary tells one of the most burning episodes of the Falklands War; the sinking of the warship General Belgrano by the HSM Conqueror submarine, which caused the death of more than three hundred Argentine crew members, thus sealing the British triumph of the conflict. Here things are explained that historians had already sufficiently contrasted, such as the fact that Margaret Thatcher personally decided to sink the ship, despite knowing for certain that it was outside the maritime exclusion zone that her own government had demanded from the Argentines (in fact, before being mortally hit, the Belgrano was moving away, in full retreat from said maritime line). At that time, it was already suspected that Thatcher had concocted the whole Falklands mess to overcome her popularity crisis in the United Kingdom, due to her relentless program of cuts in social policies.

The novelty of this journalistic gem lies in the fact that the story does not focus solely on the harshness of the facts (those of us with a Machiavellian spirit know that, initially, Thatcher very brilliantly overcame her internal problems through this deadly stratagem), but rather places the focus on the diary that the lieutenant of the submarine Conqueror, Narendra Sethia, wrote about the events. This text, which the author had entrusted only to one person, ended up being leaked to the press and becoming irrefutable proof of Thatcher's murderous negligence in the entire vaudeville. Faced with an initial onslaught, the prime minister managed to weather the controversy over the content of this volume (yes, literary!) by arguing that the Belgrano posed an undeniable danger to British sailors, whom she maternally called our boys; but the truth slowly and stubbornly made its way and the revelations of the text were a scandal that accelerated the fall of the Iron Lady.

The final part of this podcast explains very well how, once the content of the diary was publicized, Lieutenant Sethia and his whistleblowers were subjected to unbearable political pressure. As always happens in these matters, and as will now be seen when Donald Trump declassifies the documents of the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, unfortunately the truth arrives too late to demand political accountability from the perpetrators of the massacre. However, The Belgrano Diary comforts us with the certainty that a country like the United Kingdom allows the most stark political Hobbesianism to coexist with a necessary journalistic critique of the excesses of power. Listening to this podcast, one feels envy for the reporting done nord enllà, woven with a first-class linguistic style and through spectacular documentary work. We can criticize the great powers as much as we want, but they are also great because they review their miseries.

Catalonia has plenty of podcasting professionals—not only in the journalistic aspect, but also in the technical-producer aspect—who could give birth to documentary series like The Belgrano Diary. Unfortunately, our public television is more interested in making infra-mental products for centennials and a kind of true crime that boasts of being the best in the world and that would not pass the cotton test of a small-town station in the United States. If you don't believe me, listen to this gem and you will see how intimate literature like that of a diary can be combined with a global-scale phenomenon. Communication entrepreneurs, put in the necessary money to do things like these and thus we will achieve quality products that can compete with radio broadcasting all over the planet. From the podcast I recommend today, especially listen to the last part where it is shown that, despite national enmity, men always reconcile. In this aspect, we are better than nations.