The republic of the Basque letters (Bernardo Atxaga dixit) has 1,700 inhabitants, and the news is the W. H. The text of Auden is the poem in which the clock stops and asks the phone to be disconnected, and to give it a juicy bone so that it does not bark; and that the piano mute it and take the coffin out with silent tamborileo; and that the planes write in complaint the following message in the sky: it has died.

Hasier Etxeberria himself reported on the cancer he was suffering in ZuZeu and has continued to report on what happened to him since then. A message posted on Twitter on March 3 describes the size of the fight against evil: “I would have liked to break a new pencil in half, crac, but I can’t: I don’t have strength. Tomorrow, maybe.” And the next day's message, a little hope, next to the photograph of a broken pencil, five words. “Today, yes, he has made crac.”

Fighting until the end, he went with 29 March in all its dimensions: journalist and writer, of course, but also promoter – remember that at the time of the 2006 truce he was spokesman for the Milakabilaka initiative; or when the Guggenheim was about to open up in the Kultur-Tribuaren Berbak group; a great effort in the dissemination of art and gastronomy in the Basque country; “For friends there is nothing better than that, when you have a person who wants a lot of life, it makes you participate in it.”

There has been a lot of talk about Hasier Etxeberria, about his trajectory, about his place in Basque culture, about the conversations we had with him in one sauce or another. And I would say a lot, because I didn't leave anyone indifferent, I couldn't: I had opinions, I didn't get tergiverted. Didn't you like that book? I would say this directly to the writer. On the contrary, he was very pleased that he was responsible for the correct reading of the novel.

Five writers, who helped curb the canonical writers of our literature, knowing that canons are always able to say something, but someone has to put the point in the debate. Although it was published 15 years ago, it is still a reference work. It's no coincidence.

Not how many human beings have felt their loss at death. “He was one of ours,” says the narrator at Lord Jim of Joseph Conrad. One of us was Hasier, and not unimportant.