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Dan Brown: ‘The human species has never created a technology that it hasn’t weaponized’

Anatxu Zabalbeascoa — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Dan Brown’s house in Exeter, New Hampshire, doesn’t resemble something out of a movie; it resembles something out of a Dan Brown novel. Bronze deer flank the door to a sprawling English garden, and bookcases conceal passageways. There are also copies of Leonardo da Vinci paintings, such as The Virgin of the Rocks, the original of which hangs in London’s National Gallery. Cheerful and fit — he windsurfs — the 61-year-old Brown has lived his entire life inside a radius of just 11.5 square miles. The private school he attended — where his father (now widowed and in love with a Sicilian woman, he says) taught math — and the church where his mother played the organ surround this home he built with his first wife, Blythe Newlon, whom he met while studying music at the academy she ran. Twelve years his senior, Newlon is an art historian. Brown thanked her for her help in the construction of The Da Vinci Code. Six years after his high-profile divorce, the writer has traded religion for science. His new book, The Secret of Secrets, was published on September 9, which took us to New Hampshire to visit the writer.

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Francis’ fight against pedophilia: A thorny challenge

Julio Núñez ,Íñigo Domínguez — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 10:06:32 GMT

In 2018, EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church and has an updated database of all known cases. If you are aware of any cases that have not been reported, please write to us at: abusos@elpais.es. If the case is in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

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Julián Casanova, historian: ‘The good things Franco did were done by democracies without torture or death sentences’

Jose Andrés Rojo — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 04:30:00 GMT

Julián Casanova (Zaragoza, 1956) says that history travels “down many streets and in many directions” and can only be understood through a “deep investigation” into the events of the past. In Franco, Casanova constructs a portrait of the Spanish dictator for the 21st century in 30 brief and very agile chapters, which he has completed with a photographic album that gives an account of the figures who surrounded him, a rigorous chronology and an extensive bibliographic commentary. There is something about Casanova, professor of contemporary history at the University of Zaragoza, that makes him a rara avis in his profession: the long periods of time that he has taught outside of Spain, in the United States but above all in Budapest and Vienna at the Central European University, and his eagerness to intervene in public discussion, whether on social networks or in traditional media. He has studied and written about anarchism, the Republic and the Civil War, but also about Europe, which was torn apart after the Great War, the Russian Revolution and the violence that has marked the 20th century. He says that “it is possible to explore the past without seeking a conviction or an absolution”: “You cannot put anyone in a courtroom because the goodness or evil of the characters is not a historical concept.” He comments on Francisco Franco that “he was not a charismatic character,” but that unlike others who were, he died in his bed and was afforded a pharaonic burial, “and we will have to explain why.”

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‘Pretty girls love Jesus’: From Hakuna to Generation God, Christian fashion brands for young people are on the rise

Leticia García — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 04:00:00 GMT

Generation God, Forty Six Ten, God Motive... typing the hashtag #christianfashion into TikTok, which has generated no fewer than 40 million videos on the topic, brings up dozens of young entrepreneurs who have recently created fashion brands bearing Christian slogans. Almost all of them have had videos go viral, and they all look alike: they are urban fashion brands, with sports designs similar to Supreme or Palm Angels, except that instead of logos they carry phrases like “God’s got this,” “Seek first his Kingdom,” “God is good,” “Pretty girls love Jesus,” or even NBA jersey with the name and number of the players swapped put for biblical verses. Most of these brands donate part of their income to local Christian organizations or to the church to which their founders belong, and almost all of them ship internationally.

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How Opus Dei sought financing from Franco: An ‘economic sacrifice in the service of God, the Fatherland and the New State’

Natalia Junquera Añón — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 16:54:46 GMT

July 14, 1952. Álvaro del Portillo, one of the first members of Opus Dei and the priest who would later replace the organization’s founder, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, following his death in 1975, writes to the dictator Francisco Franco: “Your Excellency, I have come from Rome with the sole purpose of requesting an audience with Your Excellency, but, given the lateness of the summer, I fear I will not be able to have the great honor and joy of visiting you to speak about our work and projects and to explain to you many other things that Your Excellency, as a good son of the Church and natural Lord of the Spanish people, would be of interest to you. I would like to address this letter to you.” The document, provided to EL PAÍS by British researcher Gareth Gore, author of Opus, has a specific objective that Escrivá de Balaguer’s right-hand man arrives at after a few detours: to ask for money.

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Manipulation, greed and power: The untold story of Opus Dei

Natalia Junquera Añón — Sun, 06 Oct 2024 14:12:59 GMT

“The Work is a danger to itself, to its members, to the Church and to the world,” concludes 43-year-old author Gareth Gore. He writes this in his newly released book Opus, the culmination of the British journalist’s five-year-long investigation into the organization that was founded almost a century ago by a Spanish Catholic priest named Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer.

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