CONTRIBUTION
Mónica Fernández-Aceytuno (Villa Cisneros, Western Sahara, 1961) is an environmental communicator and nature writer. A columnist with ABC for almost two decades, she currently contributes to the Cadena SER radio program Hoy por Hoy Madrid, which features her Diccionario Aceytuno, a collection of words naming elements of nature that she has been compiling and defining throughout her career.
A biologist by training, it was after a stay in Alaska that Fernández-Aceytuno, who was then working for a Catalan pharmaceutical firm, decided to change her professional direction: “I came out of that trip transformed and determined, after contemplating the sublime landscapes of Alaska, to leave my job, which was a good job, and devote myself to proclaiming abroad the beauty of nature.” Her first port of call, in 1991, was the Cadena SER radio program Hoy por hoy, then presented by Iñaki Gabilondo. Every day, after the 10:00 news, she produced a section known as Parte Natural in the style of a weather report. In it, she explains, she would speak about plants in bloom, the arrival of orcas or swallows, give the ozone layer index and fire risk data and broadcast sounds of nature: “Even then I argued that nature should be like culture, that it didn’t need a disaster to be valid news. We don’t just talk about a museum because it has burned down, but when an exhibition opens. Nature is a permanent art exhibition, and it has to be advertised so we can enjoy this natural heritage any day.”
The success of Parte Natural led to many invitations from newspapers and magazines to write on the environment. She began at the magazine Cambio 16, where she had a full-page article, and moved from there to Diario 16. She then took her byline to newspaper ABC, where she remained for 19 years. Her first appearance was in the News section, with a piece titled “Arrival of the Birds that Sleep in the Air,” but the paper soon launched a dedicated Ecology section. “It was a nice experience to bring the swifts to the print press,” she recalls.
The writer talks about the power of words to make us aware of the environment around us in all its beauty. “We are losing sight of the wonders of nature here in Spain, the most biodiverse country in Europe, because we don’t know how to name them. There are very few people capable of naming the tree growing below their house, the bird that flies overhead every day, the insects they encounter, or what they feel on contemplating a particular landscape. Human language has distanced us from nature and I want to use it now to reconnect us,” she says. This was the thinking behind the Diccionario Aceytuno which she began in 2012, and which now has thousands of terms hosted on its website. Not only that, the glossary has its own “academy”, with members specializing in different species (for example, the brown bear, cork oak or holm oak) who are in charge of compiling the words for that particular entry.
In parallel, Aceytuno has written for specialist magazines like Salvaje, directed the Clips Natura mini documentaries on Spanish wildlife, and published outreach books such as El país de los pájaros que duermen en el aire, La tercera rama or, more recently, Mañana es tarde, where she advocates a model of sustainable development that preserves biodiversity.
The award-winning writer has called for a “third branch” between science and literature which draws knowledge from them both: “I think that all the arts and sciences help to understand the environment. Knowledge can also come from poetry and literature. I have transited this third branch, using words, poetry and writing to talk about science and spread knowledge. If we want people to know and defend nature, it has to move them. Poetry and art are what convey the emotion of nature’s beauty, which is what truly touches us.”
Picture: Roberto Seoane