Martín Caparrós believes that "telling and analyzing" will distinguish journalists from technical experts.

Journalist and writer Martín Caparrós (1957), who this week received the Manu Leguineche International Journalism Award in Spain, asserts that the ability to " tell " and "analyze" that journalists continue to possess will continue to make "the difference beyond technical changes."

Martín Caparrós will receive the 13th Manu Leguineche Chair Journalism Award next Monday, June 16. https://t.co/0iTdXkomkV pic.twitter.com/1hinQ847EA

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"It's a very pleasant surprise. Awards are a very rare thing, especially when they're awards you don't even enter," Caparrós explains about this award in an interview.

He sees himself as a man “with a taste for telling stories,” and in fact, he came to journalism by chance after graduating in History: “I wanted to be a photographer, and when I finished high school, some friends took me on as a photography apprentice at a newspaper in Buenos Aires. I was 16, and since it was summer and there weren't many people, I couldn't start until later, so I stayed on as a midshipman .”

Those days at the newspaper , he was invited to write a story based on a wire from an agency; "I did it, and apparently they didn't mind, and that's how I started doing print journalism," he notes.

That newspaper closed a year later, and he was subsequently forced to flee Argentina after the coup d'état . He recalls that during those years, he did very little journalism, but did begin writing novels. He returned to journalism when he returned to Argentina in 1983.

It was precisely during those years when he was in Spain that he became aware of Manu Leguineche, after whom the award is named , but he never met him personally.

Caparrós says he came to journalism through literature and an interest in the world in general, as well as through his history degree. "Even now, for young people who want to be journalists, I recommend that they not study journalism, but rather history or sociology, which help you understand the world ."

Regarding whether he feels more like a journalist or a writer, he says he believes that "they are the same. I am a writer who sometimes writes about confirmed facts and sometimes invents a bit based on less concrete facts. So I feel like a writer who sometimes practices a genre that is journalism, the novel, or poetry..."

Regarding journalism and the times he lives in, Caparrós maintains that "here we are told that courage is assumed in bullfighters, and I believe that it is also assumed in journalists, and when they don't have it, they will be a bad journalist, but you shouldn't boast about having it because it comes with the profession ."

Regarding lies and the changes brought about by new technologies, he believes that "they have always existed," but "now they spread quickly with social networks , but they can also be refuted more quickly through these same networks."

The latest book published by Martín Caparrós is Before Anything Else , where he reviews and explores his life with a mix of notes on the ALS disease he suffers from and on death.

"I'm quite happy with what's happened with the book, with a lot of warm responses ," he says, and although he claims that his life has changed, especially in the traveling aspect, which he devoted much of the year to, he still enjoys writing.