His name was Luis de Oteyza, he was a poet, writer, journalist, adventurer, director of the newspaper La Libertad, representative of the Radical Party and ambassador to Venezuela.. He was also an innovator, pioneer of radio, investigative and data journalism and used the book and radio as new platforms, new journalistic narratives.

That journalism of Oteyza, Kapuscinski, with added and intentional value, as Nacho Cardero, the director of El Confidencial, always reminds us, is what we practice in the Master of El Confidencial with the techniques and tools of the present: investigative journalism, new narratives , data, transparency, fact-cheking (verification) and artificial intelligence.

In August 1922, 101 years ago, he interviewed the Riffian leader Abd el-krim El Khattabi in Axdir (near Al Hoceima, today Morocco, yesterday Spanish Protectorate), in enemy territory.

A year earlier, on July 21, 1921, the Annual disaster occurred, where more than 12,000 Spanish soldiers died and Oteyza wanted to know how, why, who was responsible for that massacre, the level of corruption of the Spanish Army in the Protectorate and, above all, what was going to happen to the 491 Spanish soldiers that the Riffian leader had turned into his prisoners (147 died during captivity).

All this happened between July 1921 and August 1922.. And during that time the newspaper La Libertad sold an average of 230,000 copies in a country with 43.3% illiteracy and no transport infrastructure for the newspapers to reach all of Spain. Oteyza also founded Radio Libertad and was director of Wireless Telegraphy.

After the Annual disaster, Oteyza wanted to know and went to the root of the conflict, to the material author of that massacre, Abd el-Krim himself.

The director of La Libertad left his office, put on his reporter’s boots and formed and directed the first investigative team for a Spanish newspaper: Alfonso Sánchez, Alfonsito (photographer), José Díaz, Rafael Hernández and Teresa de Escoriaza (first woman sent special to a war).

The meeting, face to face, between Abdelkrim and Oteyza took place on August 2, 1922, after multiple vicissitudes to cross enemy lines.

Alfonso Sánchez, Alfonsito, raised graphic testimony of that scoop, exclusive between the journalist and the fearsome Riffian leader.

Oteyza collected data, verified the facts, and obtained documentation to offer his newspaper readers and point out who was responsible for the Annual disaster.

He spoke with Abd el-Krim and with the Spanish prisoners (soldiers, chiefs and officers) that the Riffian leader was holding captive:

–The Rif does not hate the Spanish people, and it would never have hated them if it were not for the military invasion.

Abd el-Krim also set conditions for the release of the prisoners:

-That four million pesetas be delivered.

Oteyza did not limit himself to “go, see and tell”. Oteyza acted as an investigative and data journalist, looked for the evidence and turned his reports into notitia in criminis so that the Spanish people knew what happened and how it happened.

And, later, he compiled his reports and interviews, which he published throughout the month of August 1922 in the newspaper La Libertad and later in a book: Abdelkrim and the prisoners.

In reality, Oteyza was a committed journalist, intentional. The Spanish Ryszard Kapuscinki of the 20th century already practiced the informative philosophy that Nacho Cardero, director of El Confidencial, and the Master of Investigative Journalism, New Narratives, Data and Verification of this newspaper defend today:

he worked and investigated so that his information, reports , denunciations and disclosure of corruption would serve to change something in Spanish society.

The historian Rosa de Madariaga vindicated the figure and good journalistic work of the director of La Libertad in her book Spain and the Rif (2000):

“Luis de Oteyza reflected live, direct and sincere testimonies. When he set out to tell the Spanish public the four truths, courageously and honestly exposing the reality of some facts that were carefully hidden or presented distorted. That is why he drew the hostility of most of his colleagues “.

And when Oteyza felt persecuted, censored and gagged for his way of doing and living journalism – the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the purchase of the newspaper La Libertad by the businessman Juan March – he took a plane, in the company of the photographer Alfonso Sánchez , Alfonsito, and went around the world, in the image and likeness of another of our great journalists: Manu Leguineche.

Asia, Europe, Africa, America… These were some of the continents where Oteyza applied the journalistic formula that Kapuscinski later practiced: “Be, see, hear, share and think”. His chronicles and reports became books and he did journalism and literature.

When Oteyza returns from one of his long trips, From Spain to Japan (1927), he reflects and writes: “Everything is the same / it seems like it was yesterday / the day I left…/”.

And he clarifies: “The panorama that, for some time now, we Spaniards have been enjoying bores me, bores me deeply, bores me to despair (…) I am going to see new horizons expand before my eyes. I will see other people and other customs…”.

And resume your adventures by plane. Formula that was later copied by others such as the teacher Manuel Chaves Nogales. In Cabo Juby, while he was traveling to Senegal for the Madrid newspaper Heraldo, he met Antoine Saint-Exupery, pilot, head of the French Aeropostal station in that city and writer of El Aviador, Vuelo Nocturno and El Principito.

In Tarfaya, next to Cabo Gaby, there is currently an air museum in memory of Saint-Exupery.

In 1928, after finishing his African adventure, Oteyza wrote the book To Senegal by Plane, In Remote Cipango, The Magic Tapestry, The Treasure of Cuauhtemoc…

Oteyza, declared a Republican, was a deputy -only for a few months in 1923 for Huelva and on behalf of the Radical party after denouncing in La Libertad the conditions of misery and slavery in which the miners of Riotinto lived.

In 1933, after his comings and goings around half the world, he published La tierra es redonda. Later he was appointed Plenipotentiary Minister by the Republic, first in Peru and later in Venezuela..

In 1936, when the Civil War began, he abandoned his diplomatic career and moved to New York.. And from there he began to collaborate with the most important media in Latin America: El Excelsior (Mexico), Crítica (Argentina), El Diario de la Marina (Cuba).

Later, he settled in Cuba for two years and ended up in Venezuela, where he founded the literary magazine Sábado – which was published in Colombia – and was commissioned to assemble a collection of books on Venezuelan authors called Biblioteca Popular..

Manuel Chaves Nogales and Luis de Oteyza were two leaders and competitors of journalism at that time and their literary and journalistic works, such as Juan Belmonte and El diablo blanco, were translated into English and used in different foreign universities as a manual for learning Spanish.

The teacher Kapuscinski used to say that “true journalism is that of live contact with people and with situations”.

This direct knowledge constitutes the basis of serious reporting and with literary ambitions. This reflection of Kapuscinski’s was already used by Oteyza in his work and Ramón Lobo, a benchmark for committed and intentional journalism and who left us on August 2, captured it in his life and in his book The day Kapuscinski died.