Sánchez Gómez, in his newspapers, paired individualism and collectivism. Each of his organs enjoyed absolute autonomy and independence, and yet, each resembled the other as closely as two drops of water. The lame fellow thus realized in his publications unity and variety.
El Radical, for example, a rabidly Republican paper, devoted its first column to attacking the Government and the priesthood; but its news items were the same as those of El Mundo, an impenitently conservative daily which employed its first column in defense of the church, that Holy Ark of our traditions; the Monarchy, that glorious institution, symbol of our Fatherland; the Army, most powerful bulwark of our nationality; the Constitution, that compendium of our public liberties....
Of all the newspapers printed there, Los Debates alone constituted a profitable venture for its proprietor, Don Pedro Sampayo y Sánchez del Pelgar. Los Debates—using the figures of speech employed in the daily—was a terrible battering-ram against the purse of the politicians, an inexpugnable fortress for the needs of the creditors.
Blackmail, in the hands of the newspaper director, was converted into a terrible weapon; neither the ancient catapult nor the modern cannon could be compared with it.
The newspaper owned by Don Pedro Sampayo y Sánchez del Pelgar had three columns of its own.
These columns were written by a huge, thick-set Galician of most uncouth appearance, named González Parla, who wielded a pen that went straight to the point, and by a certain Señor Fresneda, as thin as a rail, exceedingly delicate, well dressed and always starving.
Langairiños, the Superman, was on the staff of Los Debates, but only as an aliquot part, since his works of genius were printed in the nine toads that were born daily in Sánchez Gómez’s printery.
It is high time that we introduced Langairiños. The newspaper-men called him Superman in jest,—Super for short—, because he was forever prating about the coming of Nietzsche’s superman; they did not realize that, jest or no jest, they but did him justice.
He was the highest, the loftiest of the editorial staff; sometimes he signed himself Máximo, at others, Mínimo; but his name,—his real name, that which he immortalized daily, and increasingly every day, in Los Debates, or in El Tiempo, El Mundo or El Radical, was Ernesto Langairiños.
Langairiños! A sweet, sonorous name, somewhat like a cool zephyr in a summer twilight. Langairiños! A dream.