Martín Caparros, a man made of literature

He arrives dressed in black, with his usual imperial mustache , now gray. Behind him, a gesture still indecipherable. He poses meekly for the photos. He lets them be seen, except when he realizes his wheelchair doesn't fit. It's not an awkward moment. He handles his motorized situation with patience, but not resignation . He asks questions, "Who's at the paper now?", "How's the newsroom doing?", and wants to hear answers. He has a chocolate chip cookie in his hand and warns that it would be good if he didn't appear in the images. He hides it behind a cup of coffee that was brought to him a little while ago and follows the suggestion of the click. Facing the window. With a dark background. In front of the white wall. He chats , "A recorder not working is a journalist's nightmare," and his gaze wanders to a specific memory .

Postcards from yesterday's tribute to @martin_caparros . Unforgettable moments. ❤️ Some photos are from @revistaanfibia, others are mine, and one was stolen from @LauCuk 's IG. pic.twitter.com/SnZ4gs5tk8

— Claudia Piñeiro 💚 🧡 (@claudiapineiro) July 11, 2025

The report never begins formally; it flows from casual conversation, to which he engages with kindness, interest, and unhurriedness. He isn't in a hurry to promote a book or an event. He tells anecdotes , like the time he came away from an interview when he was very young and discovered the tape recorder had jammed. "I had to sit down and see what I remembered and transcribe from memory," he laughs now, from a distance. Is he really Martín Caparros, the corrosive chronicler who doesn't let a thing go , both in his fiction and non-fiction literature and on social media, when he responds, fights, and stings his adversaries? Yes, he is. But there's something different about him.

He's in Buenos Aires on a near-love visit . He came at the request of his friends, who organized a show for him on Thursday, July 10, at the Alvear Theater. " They were jealous because we did it in Spain, at the Ateneo de Madrid, with the people who are there . This is the replica or Buenos Aires version," he explains with almost childlike conceit. Clarín is among the companies that accompanied this visit.

A. First and foremost, she began writing her memoir, which she published in 2024, after learning she had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). She didn't plan to publish it, she says. "They told me I was going to die": that's how it begins. And from there, with precision and excess, she puts her pulse of the best chronicle at the service of something else : recounting her life or, equally and moreover, understanding how she dies.

It was a personal exercise, he says, that allowed him to write in this way . He's as sharp and brilliant as ever, a master storyteller, with varied anecdotes, always presented with his brilliant wit, but now, with this, he also opens a different door. He somehow invites the reader to feel an urgency about the now ; he makes, collaterally, a call to be present in the present.

In the end, he did go out into the world. Of course. Literature is an act that culminates in the reading of others. And Caparrós is made of literature. That night at the Alvear Theater, writers, journalists, and family members, many of his loved ones, were present at the tribute in a moving performance. Each guest read a previously selected excerpt from that intimate and public book, in which life and illness intersect, but also memories, imagination, the present, and an idea of the future.

When he entered in his electric wheelchair, motor-driven, symbolic and real, he received a standing ovation. "They tricked me into coming here. They told me I wouldn't have to speak," he said , and thanked the "group of friends" who organized the event.

One of the first to come out of the wings was the psychoanalyst and historical figure of the legal abortion movement in Argentina, Martha Rosenberg, his mother, who told him "Mopi," the nickname Caparrós has been known by since childhood. This anecdote, its motive, and origin were explained in what his brother Gonzalo read. It was her turn to share a few paragraphs in which her son hypothesizes about the moment of his conception. This was new; it didn't replicate what had been done in Madrid. And it was a moment of complicit and familial comedy, which received a rousing and moving ovation from the audience.

Seated at bar-style tables, during the gathering called Caparrós and Friends, Claudia Piñeyro, Matilde Sánchez, Cristian Alarcón, Leila Guerriero, Maria O'Donnell, Daniel Guebel, and Graciela Speranza , among other cultural figures, took in the author's words. Miguel Rep drew live, and the illustrations were projected onto screens. Admission was free, and the audience was packed with young journalists, colleagues, readers, and disciples.

Two days earlier, on Tuesday afternoon, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the UBA awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in a ceremony headed by the rector Ricardo Gelpi, the dean Ricardo Manetti, the vice-dean Graciela Morgade and Guebel, a friend of the author of Ñamérica , who was in charge of the laudatio and among other things said: “Martín is our Balzac.”

The honoree joked a bit—“My beloved grandfather, a doctor, was always Dr. Caparrós; my much-missed father, a doctor, was always Dr. Caparrós. Not me; I was, if anything, until now, Pelado Caparrós or the idiot Caparrós or some similar epithet ”—and also allowed himself to show a more sensitive side. “I am impressed and moved by this distinction in one of the few places where I believe I belong,” he stated.

Earlier that morning, he arrived for the talk with Clarín at the downtown hotel where he was staying, left the cookie behind his coffee, and was... happy? Pure calm, a certain permeability. His eyes were shining. The attitude and gesture he has in every public appearance during this visit to Argentina.

But he's still the same old Caparrós . "It pains me to return to a country where fifteen million people elected a crazed screamer, a self-serving opportunist, a follower of a dead dog, such an unpleasant and prim individual to rule them," he said at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), later publishing the piece in Anfibia magazine. Now he bares his teeth. It could be a smile, or just the opposite . "My character before could have been seen as haughty, somewhat cynical. But that hasn't been the case for 12 or 13 years," he reflects, and then, like someone who knows how to be on the other side, he offers himself up to the dynamics that a report demands.

–And what is your current character?

–I don't know. With strange features. In a wheelchair. And with a certain optimism.

–Because I studied history. And history taught me that in the long run, we live better and better. We humans have an infinite quality: progress. Two hundred years ago, there were people who owned other people, and 90 or 95 percent of the world's illiteracy rate, among other atrocities. If we compare that to the way we live today, and even though everything is shit now, maybe this shit is much better. And so on and so forth.