Gonzalo Suárez at the Forum

The president of the Film Academy, Fernando Méndez-Leite, announced that the Goya Awards gala will be held on February 28 at the Forum Auditorium. The gala will include a new protocol: only one person per award-winning project will be allowed to speak. Ironically, Méndez-Leite explained how impossible it was to contain the winners' verbosity, confessing that he had been thinking about a machine gun that would allow him to suppress the surges of gratitude. And then I remembered that at this gala, the Honorary Goya will be awarded to Gonzalo Suárez for "a career that has seen him develop a surprising filmography."

When they told him, Suárez must have realized that, indeed, his filmography is so surprising that the first person surprised by the award is him. The Goya won't honor the jury that awarded it so much as a figure who, by repeatedly repeating his uniqueness, devalues ​​the kind of labels that aren't comfortable with singular creativity like his. At ninety-one years old, I don't rule out that he's considered whether it would be better for him to receive the award alive or dead—or dodging machine gun bullets—because the story of a filmmaker-writer who decides to die to see what effect receiving a Goya has while pretending to be alive could also inspire one of his short stories. Because Suárez is, in addition to being a father of four children, the discoverer of Charo López as a symbol of transition and a drinking buddy of Sam Peckinpah, a monumental writer.

At 91 years old, I don't rule out Suárez considering whether it would be better for him to receive the award alive or dead.

I discovered Gonzalo Suárez when I was twenty (me, not him), reading Triunfo magazine, which recommended the book Gorila en Hollywood . I also discovered him through a eulogy by Julio Cortázar, who described Suárez's books as "a slippery work" and, with great insight, compared him to Boris Vian. ​​It was 1980, and I rediscovered all of his books. Since then, I have followed him with the faith of a convert who, if a book doesn't meet his expectations, attributes it to his own ignorance; if it does, it reinforces his idolatry.

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The Sole of My Shoes has recently been reissued, with a prologue by Eduardo Mendoza, which chronicles the days when Suárez was called Martin Girard and worked as a Barça scout under the orders of the slippery Helenio Herrera (who eventually produced a film for him). He also revived The Case of the Severed Heads , a premonition of a graphic novel from 1958. The most interesting aspect, apart from the prologue by Javier Cercas, is the biographical flap—one of the most mistreated publishing genres. It is an autobiographical gem that begins: “I was born under the bombs during the Asturian mining revolution, and during the civil war, they continued to bomb me.” On February 28, the living and dead members of the Academy will bombard him with a singular and dithyrambic ovation.