IN SITU with Antoni Batista

We invite you to come onstage and delve into some Season 25-26 plays in the company of experts on the underlying themes of some of this season’s shows.

Irish peace at the end of silences
In the Stormont Castle peace talks, Belfast, 1997-98, the dialogue was fruitful starting from a methodological protocol that made it easier to break the ancestral silences and, with them, the chronic hatreds. The top representatives of the two-armed groups killing each other on the streets of Ulster, Ian Paisley (Ulster Resistance-Democratic Unionist Party) and Martin McGuinness (IRA-Sinn Féin), they ended up becoming friends and sharing the highest ranks of the first governments of national concentration, prime minister and deputy prime minister.
I was a special envoy of La Vanguardia at the time of the 'troubles' and followed on-site Stormont’s talks with sources from all sides, unionists, republicans and representatives of the English government. Besides, of course, interesting political and journalistic balances, I have even preserved in an emotional way personal enriching episodes from the end of that war. That also had an impact on the resolution of the Basque conflict, which has been one of the axes of my journalism.
_Antoni Batista