We meet for a coffee at 7pm, his “mid-morning,” in his neighborhood, one of those new districts on the outskirts of Madrid with wide avenues and blocks with swimming pools. We take shelter from the heat in one of the bars in the area, with its giant screens set up to watch this Sunday’s Euro Cup final. Sánchez is happy. At midnight, the time when others go to sleep, he will appear on the radio from 4 to 6 in the morning to bill with his team the last program of the season of If it dawns we leave with an audience in the studio to celebrate the end of the school year. Afterwards, she will begin her month-and-a-half vacation as a radio star, a medium in which she began working, without pay, at the age of 17 and in which she has done everything. She feels better than ever, she confesses.
How much script does it take to make your show sound improvised?
Everything. From the moment we wake up, my team and I are on the lookout for current events to turn them around, tell them in a different way and be, at the same time, the first newspaper of the morning. That’s many more hours than we are on air. I was amused the other day by a listener’s tweet. He said he felt cheated because, as we broadcast in streamingHe saw us reading papers and accused us of being scripted. The scam is what others do on other radio stations: they come and say whatever they want. It’s very noticeable when you listen to it.
And he doesn’t look at anyone…
This is not about pointing the finger at colleagues, because I don’t blame it on a lack of professionalism either. Radio has been the ugly duckling or the poor brother of the media and, if you don’t have a team and many hours of work behind you, you can’t make the same product, even if you are the best professional in the world.
How much rock have you hit the waves?
All the world’s work, but I’m very happy with it, and it’s helped me learn a lot. I’m not complaining. I’m privileged. I’ve wanted to do this since I was 16. My father had a company and I could have had a life working for him, but this was my passion. When I was studying at the institute, I would go to Radio Juventud in Barcelona on Sunday nights to wait for a man who was doing a motor show to finish early and go into the foreign language studio to present music.
Free, of course.
Of course. And I have been the star of a municipal radio station for 40,000 pesetas. But I am not complaining. All of this allowed me to direct programmes from a very young age. Because I liked it. I also don’t believe what many media outlets sell to young people today, that you have to work for free in exchange for visibility: that is a joke. The work has to be paid decently and supported by labour rights, but, beyond that, I take this with the discipline and motivation of an elite athlete. That is to say, you cannot work only 6 and a half hours if you want to make a radio station of a certain excellence.
The working day in the SER chain is 7 hours.
And it’s very good to have them insured by agreement. Now, ask any of the stars, [Carles] Francino, A Àngels [Barceló]. They spend those hours almost on air. Before and after there is much more work than all that.
Is it your vice, your vocation, your public service?
A bit of all of that. I wouldn’t cope so well with the profession and its tolls, nor would I be so dedicated to it if I didn’t have a vocation. This job can’t and shouldn’t be like that of a bank accountant.
And do you demand the same from your collaborators?
I don’t think it should be required. When you choose your collaborators, you value that predisposition, you think you see that passion in them and then, little by little, a kind of natural selection takes place. Those who stay with me are those who are chosen by themselves; among those of us who have this vice and this illness, there are those who follow your wheels and those who fall out of the pack. I have had interns who have lasted a day, because this was very hard for them. And people who, having all the desire in the world, their nature did not allow them this schedule, this backwards living. It is better for them to realise as soon as possible, this is not about suffering.
Your collaborators are very young people. What do they bring to you?
I like to surround myself with young, lively people who have their eyes wide open. In this profession, you can’t lose your edge.
At 58, they will call him a ‘boomer’, of course.
No, I’m going to give you some good news. I’ve been doing some sociological research and neither you nor I are boomers [ríe]We are generation X, by a hair. And, because of our profession, because of having to have our eyes and satellite dish always alert, we are almost millennials [se parte]Seriously, I’ve always been a bit of a tech geek and one of the things I do to get on their level, to make them take me more seriously, and not see the boomer who runs the show is to give them iPhone tricks that they don’t even know. In exchange, I’m one of the first to find out what PEC means. [por el culo] in their jargon and I act cool with my daughters, who, at 27 and 28 years old, have let their guard down and think they know everything. That way everyone wins.
They say that by working at night you lose years of life. Is it worth it?
I almost live like a monk, but it’s what I want. I’m in great health, I’m better than ever because I do what I like. I had breakfast at 3 in the afternoon, I’ll have dinner at 8:30, I’ll take a nap from 9:30 to 10 at night, I’ll start work at 12 and I’ll go to bed between 7 and 8. Let’s say I’m living an Australian life living in Spain.
Who do you imagine on the other side?
We have 98,000 listeners, many of them loyal, but they are not always the same ones. From the worker on duty at the Firestone plant in Burgos, to the executive who has to catch a plane at 5, or the lady from Vilassar who wrote to us saying that she had an operation for a silly eye problem, went blind, and since then, we have been her eyes and her antenna to the world. There are many circumstances in life that can leave you sleepless, or make you get up early or stay up late, and want or need company. I think that SER realized that closing my first stage of the If it dawns, which lasted from 1994 to 2012 was to clear the way for the competition, and now we are on the path to recovering that audience.
With that programme you had won the Ondas award in 2009. How did you experience that?
It was a business decision and I felt it was an injustice. Towards me and towards all the work we had done. I think the facts have proved us right. That made me have some doubts about whether my vocation made sense. That forced me to completely change my way of life. If I wanted to continue in the elite, in the cream of the radio, I had to come back to Madrid, having my daughters in Barcelona. I tend to see the positive side. It was what had to be done, and I did it.
I ask you the question that is never asked to men: Did you think about family conciliation when doing this?
It’s great that you asked me, because I’ve done a lot of work to keep in touch with my daughters. Every weekend I went to see them, or they came, and I must have done something right when they still want to see me and travel with me. I have all the points of the AVE world. On the train is where I was most with myself and where I have written the bulk of my books. They have helped me calm my hyperactivity, my inability to leave my mind blank. I have poured my inner world and some demons into them. They serve as therapy for me.
Have you ever been to therapy?
Yes, there have been times in my life when I have needed them, like someone who needs to go to the traumatologist. I have gone through a divorce, a professional divorce and the breakup of my life when I returned to Madrid. And I have been very lucky that all my therapists have endorsed my great capacity to heal from within and to immediately see where the exit door is. They have helped me a lot.
Where is your ego?
If you’re talking about awards and recognition, I’ve got my vanity covered. On the contrary, I think I’ve been too modest many times. If I’d been ruder and kicked down the door of an office, things might have gone differently for me in the short term. But I’m not like that, I’ve preferred to be good, and I don’t regret it. That’s why, sometimes, I give my characters that bad temper that I haven’t had, and it doesn’t work out well for them either, don’t believe it.
Have you ever envied someone or felt envious of others?
A human resources psychologist once told me that there are two things that no one admits: being untidy or envious. With this premise, I tell you that what I do admit is that I have felt admiration for the admiration that others inspire, and I have tried to learn from the good things about them.
His book ‘Lines crossed’ has the Process as a backdrop. Being called Roberto Sánchez Ruiz and having been born in Barcelona, I suppose you have sometimes been labelled a ‘charnego’.
Many, and a great honour indeed. I have eight Andalusian surnames, my family is from Antequera. That is why I take it so badly that, saying the same thing in Madrid and Barcelona, in Madrid you are a dangerous Catalan nationalist and, in Barcelona, a posh Spanish nationalist who needs to wear the Spanish bracelet. And I am the same here and there. These contradictions, which I fictionalise through the characters in the book, are the ones we should analyse and take a look at.
How did you handle going from being number 1 on your own show to being number two on someone else’s?
It depends on who is number 1. In my case it was Carles Francino, in WindowHe gave me my place. He told me: you are Roberto Sánchez, you have an Ondas, you don’t have to prove anything. We had the humility to learn and let each other get to know each other. I took it as a master’s degree and when, in August 2021, I closed Window and I opened the If it dawns I made him wiser and stronger. In a way, I think I’m reaping what I’ve sown. Building a tower out of all the stone I’ve chipped away.
He does not lack humor.
Humor is the way out I was telling you about. And look, I’m not going to be modest about that: I’ve been bubbling inside since I was a child. I can’t leave my mind blank. My mother said I was a clown, and I’m not going to be modest about that. I’m a good actor. If I hadn’t been a journalist, I would have been a clown.
IF IT DAWNS WE’LL LEAVE
Roberto Sánchez Ruiz (Barcelona, 58 years old) was so hungry for the microphone that, at 17 years old, while studying COU, he would sneak out on Sunday nights to Radio Juventud in Barcelona to wait for someone to let him present records for a while on loan. “Thank goodness my parents spoke to a man from the Spanish Radio and Television Institute who recommended that I study Journalism, and I listened to them, because all I wanted was to work in radio,” he recalls now. That’s how, with a scholarship, he started working at the SER network. Until today. Sánchez presented and directed the legendary nighttime programme If it dawns we leave between 1994 and 2012, when, after winning an Ondas award in 2009, the company decided to cancel the show. After a period as number 2 and summer substitute for Carlos Francino in the direction and presentation of the afternoon program WindowSánchez recovered the format, with which he has managed to gather 98,000 listeners, according to the latest General Media Study. At the same time, he has developed a career as a novel writer. His last two titles, Sleepless night and Crossed linesare published by Plaza and Janés.
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