Three years after being released -and nine editions later, ‘Fariña’ (an excellent book about drug trafficking in Galicia, North of Spain) has just been banned by a judge in Madrid, following the request of a former mayor of the area who is mentioned in the story for his alleged links with drug dealers. This is an interim measure to try to protect his reputation and avoid both the printing and selling of new copies. However, how do you do that in the digital era? Fariña is already the best selling book in Amazon Spain (more than 30k copies), and it is still on sale as the former mayor has not paid the €10k guarantee in case this lawsuit causes potential damage to the defendant’s patrimony.
The judge has however dismissed the former mayor’s petition to stop the broadcast of a TV series that is being produced at the moment, based on Fariña’s plot. According to that ruling, this would be a disproportionate measure, as it is still not known when the TV series would be released nor the content of the script.
According to Fariña’s publisher, Libros del KO, “we have just found it out and we are so shocked… We don’t understand it! We feel confused and powerless, let’s see what happens in the next few days.” The author, El País journalist Nacho Carretero, has expressed his feelings this morning on Twitter: “I believe it is a disproportionate [measure] to ban Fariña for telling judicially-proven facts in three lines of the book. Anyway, the plaintiff has the right to do so and it is only an interim measure, so hopefully this will soon be resolved. Many thanks for the overwhelming support.”
J.A. Bea Gondar, the former mayor of O Grove (Pontevedra, Galicia) was condemned by the National High Court for drugtrafficking-related crimes. In fact, it was proven that he was involved with the Cali cartel who tried to bring 30 kg of contraband cocaine into Galicia, part of a bigger shipment (2,000 kg). The Supreme Court then annulled the ruling for some procedural errors in the testimony of one of the witnesses, a reformed criminal, although the facts mentioned before -those included in the book- were still considered judicially proven.
Libros del KO has just printed 10k new copies of the tenth edition of Fariña, and if Bea Gondar decides to pay the €10k guarantee, the book should therefore disappear from traditional and online bookshops. The damage for the publishers could be severe, but it seems that the publicity this case is gaining, could actually solve their problems -by it becoming a bestseller. Bea Gondar’s aim for cleaning up his image is actually having the opposite effect: everyone wants to buy the book, read the story, find out what the fuss is about and be there for the talk of the town.
