The cervantine reports of Juan José Millás: a study of the narrative voices used in Proyecto sombra (2001-2006)

Abstract

In an article for El País, journalist Juan Cruz described the reports of Millás as “cervantinos”. With this designation he pointed out one of the fundamental characteristics of these pieces: meta-writing. In his reports, Millás uses not only the first person to expose current events, but also to describe his work as a journalist. By doing this, he seeks to achieve several objectives, one of which would be to invite the reader to reflect upon identity, a theme that appears in his literary and journalistic work. This article studies Millás' journalism to analyze the use of this and other narrative voices in Proyecto sombra (2001-2006), his first series of reports. The main purpose is to examine the relationships between his journalism and his fiction, as well as, to define the notion of “metarreportaje”, which alludes to that self-observation that Millás makes of himself in his texts.