Harry Potter 7 and why El Pais sucks

It was a huge effort to resist temptation, but I arrived at the bookstore at 8:01 on Friday (that is, a minute past midnight, London time), having managed not to read even the slightest spoiler about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I grabbed my copy, took it home and after another huge effort of will, went to bed without starting it. I knew if I started it then, I'd end up reading the night away. I didn't want that; I wanted to feel fresh and well awake while I was reading it, so it would be better to start it early the next morning and just read all day.

So at 6:30 on Saturday morning, I wake up with a huge smile, relishing the prospect of finally, finally starting the book and finding out Harry's final fate. I make breakfast, open to the first page, and remember I haven't brought in the newspaper. I'm not reading it, just in case, but I'd better bring it in.

It's lying on the floor right outside the door, looking perfectly innocent. I bend down to pick it up and for some reason, my eyes immediately go to a small headline at the bottom of the top half. And at that moment, I'm tempted to get on the car and drive to the El Pais offices and kill someone.

That little headline revealed, very clearly, Harry final fate. I'm not going to be as sadistic as those shit-for-brains fucktards at El Pais and spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, so I'll just mention it said "Harry Potter ____ at the end of the book", the blank being whether he was dead or alive. Here's what I saw, with the operative word smudged out.

Click here to see a larger version of the smudged version, and here to see the unsmudged version).

Argh!!!! I know I'm not good at expressing anger in writing, but believe me, I was (and still am) steaming. Fortunately, I'm better at expressing my anger verbally, so I kept phoning El Pais offices until I could speak with the person in charge, and I really reamed him out. I still knew the ending, but at least I'd vented, LOL! I still can't believe it... I mean, this is the biggest newspaper in the country, with journalist who are supposed to have at least a certain degree of journalistic integrity, and they pull this shit?

Oh, and to add insult to injury, the photo under the offending headline? Yep, there I am on the front page. The one in a white jacket coming out of the bookstore.

And that's not all... this morning, on page 2, another photo of me, this time as part of the weekly roundup, next to a tremendously condescending little snippet about those hysterical Harry Potter fans and how the huge expectation the book caused was so exagerated. Stupid fuckers. If it was so exagerated, then why the hell are you putting the ending of the book on your front page?

The book itself? Well, that was all good. I haven't really digested it enough to put my thoughts about it in order, so all I can say was that I enjoyed it immensely in spite of the best efforts of those idiots at El País.