«Fariña» has been the first book to be censored during the 40 years of democracy in Spain. How could we help to read a banned book? Thanks to the most important novel in history: «Don Quixote».

For the first time in the 40 years of democracy in Spain, the authorities have censored a book: «Fariña». Nacho Carretero’s work reviews the history of drug trafficking in Galicia and, among other people, links the former Galician mayor Alfredo Vea Gondar to the «narcos». As a result, the journalist and the publisher Libros del K.O. are sued for an attack on the right to honor and the book is seized by court order. For more than four months its commercial distribution was unfairly banned.

«Finding Fariña» was born as a response to this injustice, giving people the possibility to read for free and legally ‘Fariña’ during the months of prohibition. How? Using the most famous book of universal literature: «Don Quixote». We created an innovative search engine that identified the 80,049 words in «Fariña» inside Miguel de Cervantes’ book. Then, the words were extracted and reordered as they appeared in the pages of «Fariña». This way, readers could read it again without any kind of censorship.

Our response to censorship was a success. More than 168 million people from 133 different countries went to the website to read the book «Fariña». A multitude of international media talked about «Finding Fariña» and, as a consequence, what was a regional problem became a global movement in favor of freedom of press and expression. In addition, an unprecedented worldwide debate was created on social networks about the nonsense of censorship in the digital age.

The global impact of «Finding Fariña» provoked that the Spanish authorities also decided to close the Finding Fariña website. An unprecedented measure that served to amplify even more our denunciation against censorship and the lack of freedom of speech in Spain.