Either I didn’t find out or I erased it from my memory with extreme efficiency. In September 1997, RTVE put on the mother of all festivals in Las Ventas, with a cast worthy of the filthiest New Year’s Eve (from Los del Río to Julio Iglesias, including Nacho Cano), to pay a (ahem) tribute to Miguel White angel. I do remember his murder, a lot. He was old enough to shake me and cry like everyone else. Luckily, by the time public television put together that nativity scene, I was already distracted by other things. From what Juan Sanguino tells in his superb podcast Delusions of Spain (in Podium), I must have been one of the few Spaniards who didn’t find out.
You have to listen very carefully to the chapters in which Sanguino narrates that night, with an exemplary narrative pulse and elegance. Do not play them in the background while driving or cooking if you do not want to suffer an accident, because your emotions will range from hallucination to horror, and there will be times when you will not know if the laughter comes from other people’s shame or indignation. I was irritated by some of the perpetrators, who seemed proud of that disaster in which a Nacho Cano out of his mind cheered on the audience: “Louder, let Miguel Ángel hear us.”
We discover in Delusions of Spain that that phrase, which went viral in recent times, was not the worst of that collective mental alienation that turned a funeral into a town party. Sanguino could have chosen the easy path of moral superiority, but if Delusions of Spain It is worth it not for what it tells but for how it is told, trying to understand what happened that night and putting it in context. The result is much more devastating than a simple mockery, as it ends up revealing something very serious about that eternal tragedy that some of us call Spain.
You can follow EL PAÍS Television on x or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.
Receive the television newsletter
All the news from channels and platforms, with interviews, news and analysis, in addition to the recommendations and criticisms of our journalists
SIGN UP
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#night #Nacho #Cano #wanted #Miguel #Ángel #Blanco #listen