The specter of plagiarism haunts Pérez-Reverte

The script of the 2000 film Gitano (Gypsy), starring Joaquín Cortes and Laetitia Casta, might cost Captain Alastriste author Arturo Pérez-Reverte and his co-author Manuel Palacios 80,000 euros, after a Madrid court's ruling on a plagiarism accusation. In 2003 the director Antonio González-Vigil sued the scriptwriters for supposed coincidences with his film Corazones Púrpura, demanding twice as much money, 160,890 euros in damages. The latest ruling has been appealed to the Supreme Court, and the writer trusts he will win the last round.

"It is crystal clear that somebody has ambushed me in the Provincial High Court of Madrid. What surprises me is how this obvious move to wring money out of me, attempted almost 10 years ago, should now, overnight, receive the strange endorsement of a judge, thus acting in disregard of the previous rulings of her colleagues," said the creator of Captain Alatriste in a communiqué on Friday.

"To say that there is plagiarism because a story contains Gypsies, drugs, flamenco music and vengeance is like saying that there is plagiarism in a Western because it has a sheriff, outlaws, Indians and a saloon girl"

In the same note, the Murcian writer adds that the coincidences between the two stories are due to commonplaces of the genre: "To say that there is plagiarism because a story contains Gypsies, drugs, flamenco music and vengeance is like saying that there is plagiarism in a Western because it has a sheriff, outlaws, Indians and a saloon girl... No one of good faith can entertain the idea that with my background and professional career, I need to copy a story from someone I had never met then, and still haven't."

According to the court the plaintiff, González-Vigil, in the years 1995-96 submitted his script to the firm Origen PC, later the producer of Gitano, so that "at least the defendant had the possibility of access to the plaintiff's work," adding there exists "a high degree of coincidence." Among the coincidences, the protagonist of Gitano and that of Corazones Púrpura both come out jail after a two-year sentences for drugs; have sexual relations with prostitutes; deal with bent, cocaine-sniffing policemen, and with a Gypsy patriarch.