In this time when we live under the influence of screens and keyboards, paper and ink are two of the elements we want to demand the most. Where better than to do it on these pages! At this time when several colleagues and colleagues struggle to set up the journal, which is an example of this struggle, although some find it obsolete, which for us is basic.

Why do the Internet and social networks bet on an increasingly eclipsed format? Because it guarantees us to do what we are and like: a deep, analytical and reflective journalism, far from being a vain and ephemeral information.

Publishing a weekly implies people beyond the responsibility of those who sign articles. First, those who have translated and directed this text, then illustrators, photographers and designers, and then those who deal with the economy, advertising and distribution, invisible but essential.

Receiving these pages weekly is a small collective miracle, while enjoying a great privilege to reach their homes and social centers. The role is the means of being with you, the visible, tangible support of the society we want to question, so when the one who does not know us finds us and reads a magazine of ours, it is for us a small victory, an impulse to move forward.

We do not want to deceive anyone, objectivity is a common lie in the press, which, although repeated unceasingly, will never be true. Any reality to be told is subject to the prism that is written, the choice of voices to which space is given is an act of subjectivity. The key is rigour and honesty at work, which are fortunately guaranteed by our commitment.

We are debtors of the people who trust what we do, not of the business groups, not of the political parties of every moment. Obviously, this has its limits, which makes our expansion difficult, because it stops the achievement of the hegemony that we would like, fundamentally because we want that hegemony to provoke the change of vision that the societies in which we participate need. However, we want it to remain faithful to our principles, to be made to take advantage of the road as long as we imagine changing objectives. Variability is ensured on the route.

The relationship between ARGIA and La Réplice began to materialize in May 2015, in a plaza in Vitoria-Gasteiz that has earned dignity. That cold morning, the spectacle of seeing a uniform regiment tear three young people out of the arms of their countrymen, shook many of us, and the fact that they had been interned among the walls of injustice. Several people hold their breath for several hours, silence our screams and raise our cameras to amplify their voice. We wanted to be nothing more than a means of making the world see the misfortunes and the absurdities of magnitude.
We are calm. We will continue with this “instrument” that you have in your hands, we tell you that we are attentive to what is happening and it will happen, attentive to everything we love and condemn, attentive to the historical events that encourage us not to despair. For that purpose you are the most indispensable. Without your initiative there is nothing to be counted, without your support we would not have resources. There are no poets that shut us down if we all act at once. n

P. S. “We write holding the liver or squeezing the heart.” (Ramon Acin, journalist and pedagogue killed by fascism in August 1936).