Many journalism graduates take years to find, if ever, the desired stability in the profession for which they have trained. Andrés Cabrera (Madrid, 32 years old), shortly after completing his studies at the Complutense University, sought his space outside of traditional media and became one of the pioneers of sports journalism. on-line with channels like Champions either Football Talksboth on YouTube, alongside Guillermo González and Juan Arroita. “In three years, it was a phenomenon in the Spanish-speaking world, we reached half a million followers. It was crazy to be able to make a living, because in a situation like this, many brands seek you out.” But Andrés, who shuns the parameters of meritocracy and is quick to point out that “making a living from that is the exception and there will be people who do it better without being successful,” admits that he was not happy.
“I would come home and feel empty. I was depressed. We had to produce many more videos, generate more views, we couldn’t afford to stop.” With his weekends “mortgaged” by football, the journalist also saw his personal life reduced to a circle of contacts with whom he had little in common. “I come from a working-class family. Suddenly, between 2014 and 2016, I was doing very well doing my job as a journalist and communicator and I found myself with people I was not used to dealing with, just like youtubers “I had conversations that were nothing like the ones I had with my lifelong colleagues. I felt left out,” he recalls. “We didn’t have bosses either, but we did have meetings with people with codes that I didn’t like, very fake, who only want to get money from you and pretend they care about you. One episode stuck in my mind: having a coffee with a businessman who left a 10 euro tip, as an absurd show of power, of looking at how much money I have to spare.”
A brief stay in a squatted social centre in Athens, where he arrived through friends, is the point of no return that sets him in his process of becoming aware. “I was in a completely different moment of my life in Madrid, but my friends were experiencing something like this in their daily lives. I didn’t expect it. I saw things I had never seen before, violent power structures that made me think. I started reading certain texts, I identified with them and in 2019 I decided to move away from sports journalism. I joined CNT and joined projects such as a free radio station, a collective garden or a social library in Granada.” Now, Cabrera has published his first novel, Monrovia (District 93), where he indirectly expresses the issues, insecurities and also contradictions with which he has lived in recent years
Like a novel of ideas, Monrovia is based primarily on a series of dialogues between a young woman, Marta, her father Leo and her friend Marcos while, hiding on a container ship, the three flee their country, where an authoritarian escalation has taken place. Several episodes in flashback form delve into this context. To give the story universality, the book does not specify which country it is about. “Monrovia talks a lot about contradictions and I feel very proud, because it is important to know that awareness is one thing and contradictions are another. Marta has a very strong discourse, but she feels like a traitor to her friends and her personality tires people who are not at the same point in her life. We cannot be perfect as people or as revolutionaries, what we have to look for are collective tools. Two hands among 47 million inhabitants are not much, but in your town or neighborhood they do have an influence in stopping an eviction, organizing an assembly or a union.”
Although he admits that he has put the bulk of his ideas into the protagonist, the writer has dispersed concerns and experiences in all his characters. For example, in Marcos, a school teacher who runs a music programme on a local radio station until he starts receiving threats, there are certain echoes of his biography. “There is a moment when I am making videos on YouTube that are watched by many people a week and I start giving out political pills. That causes me to receive some threatening comments or emails. Maybe there are not many people, but it puts you on alert, because it is not crazy to find yourself in a football field where the threat has been sent to you,” he explains. “With the book I try to make Marcos’ position understandable, knowing that the world is unfair, not being able to face it, spending the summer without leaving home and making the logical decision to go far away. At certain times in my life I have been in the situation of: I think this politically, but the world freaks me out, so I better not get involved.”
“I didn’t like sports newsrooms. In one particular outlet, they didn’t hire women because the boss said they distracted us.”
One of the clear inspirations that Andrés recognizes is that of the writer and columnist Layla Martínez, whose essay Utopia is not an island (2020), a historical journey through “bitter victories and glorious failures” through experiences such as pirate societies or pan-Africanism, is implicitly cited in the book. “Many people imagine the end of the world before the end of capitalism. I really liked Layla’s idea of claiming and celebrating victories, because otherwise, we cannot think of achieving anything,” he reflects. “If you only think about defeats, you end up paralyzed and giving up. We tend to think that utopias are unattainable, but we already live in one, that of the capitalists. They imagined a world where no one would touch their organs of power or their private property and they managed to make it a reality.”
Along the Labordeta path
Discovering how changes are possible and there are successful social organizations outside of capitalism is, precisely, the purpose of A utopia in the backpacka series of informative documentaries that Andrés Cabrera started in 2023. At the moment, it consists of two long episodes (more than 90 minutes each), the first on a self-managed town in Huesca –which he does not identify to avoid unexpected visits or repression like the one he suffered Sasealso in the province of Huesca, in the nineties– and the second about Almocita (Almería), which follows a model of participatory democracy, with a social currency or an energy cooperative. Although its narrative is oriented to the format podcastthe chapters are supported on YouTube, with hardly any faces shown, so that the viewer can see
with their own eyes the functioning and materialization of these collective projects. From the title, a direct allusion to the TVE program A country in the backpack (1995-2000), even in its opening and closing songs (respectively, Are and Song to freedom), Cabrera makes explicit his debt to the Aragonese singer-songwriter, writer, politician and professor José Antonio Labordeta.
“Labordeta was a great communicator and, as a politically influential person, I find him very interesting. A country in the backpack “I left messages of great significance, without telling you what to do, just showing other ways of life and, of course, taking a stand against injustices.” Cabrera does not hesitate to describe the scope of his series as “minority”, compared to the time when he commented, analyzed and reported on football. But he does not care. “Coming from sports journalism, I had a huge amalgam of followers and some were not going to tolerate anything, like the refrain of not mixing football and politics. I continued along that line and there I was filtering. There were many who stopped following me and others who, following me for ten years for football, stayed watching what I do, because they like it, understand it or are interested. They are the minority, clearly, the majority has left. But now when I take a stand with something like The 6 of Switzerland I don’t get any criticism or hate, because the people who follow me expect that content and know who I am. I feel more comfortable. I made a good decision.”
Andrés does maintain a small professional plot dedicated to sports, the podcast Koppola“We started in 2018, when I already had some certainties about where I wanted to take my life, and it is a more irreverent space, with friends from the degree to be able to say what I wanted and even criticize things about sports journalism that I could not say in other areas,” he explains. He also clarifies that, although he has taken distance, he does not share “the elitist vision of those who say that football is the opium of the people or that all those who follow football are bullies.” “In life there has to be room for leisure, and if that is your leisure, perfect. But you have to see it for what it is. I have cried for football, from joy and sadness. At what point has this been able to channel other frustrations? The fact that your life is shit from Monday to Friday does not justify yelling at a referee on Saturday. Maybe the one you have to yell at is your boss.”
Professionally, he admits to having some bad memories, such as “the dehumanization” he suffered as an intern or the sexism of part of the sector: “I didn’t like sports press editorial staff. In one media outlet in particular, they didn’t hire women because the boss said they distracted us.” However, his love of football and dedication helped him develop other interests. “I have always been interested in football as a sociological phenomenon. Through history you can understand many things about football and vice versa. For example, the Balkan war and the ultra groups of the former Yugoslavia.” In 2020, he debuted What a story!a podcast where he was able to give vent to the readings and documentation on world history that he had been cultivating for some time.
“I found it gratifying that many people recognised my work, coming from sports journalism, doing another project and that they also liked it. I had to work hard to read, but that’s fine, I think you have to keep learning until you’re 80. When you stop learning, you start to get bored.” Andrés, of course, is not bored. He says that he has just spent several months in a self-managed village, he talks about the emotion he felt when eating tomatoes he had grown and how freeing himself from the “fear of making mistakes” typical of private companies, “because of the losses or reprimands that it may entail”, helped him to assimilate with enthusiasm the functioning of the social library in which he worked in Granada. Learning with the freedom of “not looking at the world in a capitalist way”, he emphasises, without being guided by personal economic benefit. And then, of course, spreading what he has learned.
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