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Freelancer of the fortnight: Howell Llewellyn, Madrid

Posted: 16/01/08 By: Clare Fisher
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Click here to look at Howell Llewellyn's full freelance profile on Journalism.co.uk.

Why did you choose to become a freelancer?
I come from a generation where it was normal to take a year out hitch-hiking around some corner of the world before climbing too far up the 'ladder of success' in your job. That’s what I decided to do in 1975 aged 23 after 5 years at the Southend Evening Echo.

I was in charge of a couple of sections and had a weekly music column - the wonderful vinyl albums I was sent by labels between 1971-75 still have pride of place in my record collection! Anyway, I wanted to know South America before becoming editor of the Southend Evening Echo, ha ha!

But I realised after several months marching from Venezuela through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, into Pinochet's Chile and pre-coup Argentina, then Uruguay and Brazil that I would not be going back to write about ratepayers' association meetings and other 'small-town' news.

I knew from reading the UK press at British consulates that the only thing British people knew about Argentina in late 1975, three months before the Junta's military coup, was that Argentina was to host the 1978 World Cup.

In January 1976 from Montevideo, Uruguay, I sent a hand-written article by normal post on what was really happening in Argentina to the Westminster Press group, which owned the Southend Evening Echo and was then the biggest provincial press group in the UK.

It was printed in several WP papers in February, including the Southend Evening Echo, a month before the March 24 coup. I guess that's how I started as a freelancer.

If you trained, where? If not, how did you become a freelancer?
I did the NCTJ stint one day a week somewhere in East London. Didn't attend often, didn't learn much, and we studied a weird form of shorthand that was briefly in vogue and whose name I forget.

My real freelance career dates from 1981 after a 1977-80 Latin American Studies university degree course at UCL in London and a year as an English teacher in Bilbao, Basque Country.

My access to the Spanish semi-official news agency EFE wire at their London bureau allowed me to write about post-Franco Spain.

Do you specialise in any particular field and what areas do you write about?
I am Spain correspondent for global music industry trade magazine 'Billboard'. I cover the Spanish energy sector for different physical and online newsletters in the UK and US. And I report and analyse the Cuban political and cultural situation - from a pro-Fidel position, by the way.

Which publications have you been published in?
In no order: The Guardian, The Independent, City Limits (ex-rival to Time Out), Time Out travel guides, Fodor's travel guides, Birnbaum travel guides, New Musical Express (NME), New Statesman, International Press Institute (IPI) Report, Hollywood Reporter, El País (Spain's top selling daily).

Which articles, in which publication, are you the most proud of?
Maybe the February 1976 Argentina piece in Westminster Press media, including the Southend Evening Echo. Many people in Southend who didn't know where I was read it, and said "I didn't have a clue about all that, and when the coup happened I told people 'I know about all this - I read it in the Echo'".

I also had a story on the cover of Billboard in 1999 about Cuba's 'timba' music, explaining that this complex, frenetic, highly danceable form of Cuban salsa reflected the 1990s 'Special Period' in Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Communist bloc, and the overnight loss of 85 per cent of the country's economy. New York based-Billboard even put the Cuban flag on its cover.

What are the best and worst aspects of freelancing?
Best: not using any form of alarm clock, and being able to make a Wednesday a Sunday, or turn Sunday into a Wednesday.

Worst: rates do not keep pace with cost of living, not having any future retirement pension (in my case). I used to miss the usual social life and/or office gossip associated with work pals, but I've forgotten about that.

Do you have any interesting anecdotes in relation to your experience as a freelancer?
Just in general: I'm seen as wacky and eccentric in Madrid because I cycle to most interviews or presentations (bicycles are still very rare in Madrid), and between May-October wear short trousers and Menorcan leather flip-flops.

That is accepted by the suit-and-tie mob only because I am an Anglo-Saxon freelancer (many think I'm American because of Billboard).

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