See you on your first Monday in the sun, as an imminent retiree, although today there are more clouds than clear sky at aperitif time in the devilish mess of the center of Madrid, taken over by the works and a demonstration for public education. Miguel de la Fuente, however, has not been caught by the traffic jam. He has arrived on the motorcycle with which he has combed half the country and half the world, and he has left in the trunk the latest digital camera that he always carries with him, just in case, even though it is not on duty today. He comes dressed in stone gray, perfectly matched with a padded vest under a jacket and over linen pants. We talk at length and, upon arriving at the Editorial Office, I discover, horrified, that I have deleted instead of saving the conversation on my mobile. I call him, he understands — “it’s happened to me too and now you have the advantage of having all the time in the world,” he jokes — and we meet up the next day. What follows is an edited summary of both meetings. I’m sure you understand. He knows a bit about editing.
At 62, it is not yet his turn to retire. Why is she leaving?
For a mix of things. My business [RTVE] He makes it easy for me to leave and I feel a little forced. Professionally I don’t want to leave, but it is also true that I am as old as I am, the camera weighs what it weighs and it is already difficult to do what I have been doing for 40 years.
Define what you have been doing.
Moving a lot with more than ten kilos on my back: the camera, the vest, the helmet, going up and down, taking very strange positions to take different shots, not stopping all day for many days. I don’t want to get back pain or sciatica and become a burden to my teammates or ruin coverage. In wars, each person has a specific mission and cannot fail.
I thought that by saying it was a complicated job, he was referring to the emotional part.
Also. There is a part of your personal life that you leave behind. This has a lot of comings and goings, for years, and ends up becoming a way of life. This catches you, it has a lot of adrenaline that pulls you and makes you embark on the next trip. It gives you a lot of trouble, but a lot of happiness too.
Doesn’t what you see break your heart?
With the camera, working, I have no heart, only a head: I am a killer from image. My colleague, friend and brother Arturo Pérez Reverte called it going shopping, I always say that we go out fishing. We fish for stories and images to tell what is happening. With the camera, I think about what is in the shot and what I am missing. In a war, you are neither a soldier nor a tourist. But a fighter: you have a mission. Tell what you don’t want to see. If you leave without what you came looking for, your presence is useless.
And what happiness do you get from that?
Feeling good about yourself when you realize that you have been in everything that has happened in the world in recent years. We are the ones who write history. In a few years, no one will talk about us, or me, or the journalist who accompanied me, but people will remember the images of those horrors because of the images we got.
In a war, you are neither a soldier nor a tourist. But yes a fighter: you have a mission
Sometime he will cry.
Yes, I cried intensely when it touched me. I usually reserve it for the shower. It’s a kind of relief. When you are very attacked inside. After spending all day watching people say goodbye to their families on trains or old people in basements, turning on the hot water, sitting in the shower and letting the tears flow is a need to comfort yourself. I put on the song Blinding Eyes [la pone en el móvil] and I abandoned myself. It sounds very funny, but that’s how it is. Óscar Mijallo, my partner of many coverages, calls me barbie cameraman.
Have you had real fear?
Yes a lot. And it is a sensation, although it may seem strange, comparable to that of the first phase of falling in love, butterflies in the stomach, that feeling that you have come this far. It’s a wild adrenaline rush. Sometimes you go into a trance. There are episodes in which you don’t even know how you got where you are, but you are, and on total alert. It’s hard to explain, but that’s how I feel.
What hooks you about your job?
Everything: the trip, the freedom of not belonging to anything or anyone, making new friends from all over the world. Friendship and the degree of unity that certain extreme situations give, and also enmities and anger, that intensity is addictive. The company, getting along with your colleagues when covering conflicts, is essential. And there is nothing more pleasant than, at the end of the day, having a beer, or two, or three, or four and conjuring up the hardness of the job by laughing saying atrocious things. Many times it is macabre humor…
And sexist? In the mythical ‘tribe’ of correspondents They were almost all men. Dismantle the topic for me.
That’s more legend than anything else. It could have been, I’m not saying it wasn’t, but that moment has already passed. It’s curious, yes. Sexist jokes are no longer made. I think it is something generational and it is also influenced by the fact that there are more and more women reporters in conflicts. Now, sometimes, it’s the other way around. They call the shots and the rest of us have to keep quiet. Women are very good reporters, more companions, they help each other, they go places together, it is less common in men. They are great.
What did you want to be when you were little?
I liked many things and none. I have dedicated myself to swimming, for example, I have won some championships, but I saw that I was not going to make a living from that and what I wanted was to live another life, leave home, and I did it when I was 16 years old. I came to Madrid to look for them. I’m a hustler. I am self-taught and everything I know I have learned on the street, from observing. One day I was leaving a nightclub, I met a friend who worked in an agency and press and until today. I started as a paparazi. I went looking for Pippi Longstocking, and I found her. I arranged nudes with actresses, I made montages for gossip magazines, everything. Until I started to feel uncomfortable and entered Spanish Television. That hooked me. I learned from the best: the cameramen José Luis Márquez, Evaristo Canete, Jesús Mata; the reporter Arturo Pérez Reverte. Until now.
You have a daughter, how did you balance your profession with your education?
The truth is that I have not reconciled well. Shortly after going from war to war I separated from his mother and my daughter didn’t understand it very well. I hope that, in time, she will understand. [se emociona]. Whether or not I am a good father would be up to her to say.
If they take away what you love most: your house, your land, your loved ones, and you have nothing to lose, you can become a monster. We can all. Me too
What image can’t you get out of your head?
More than dead, blood and horror, the feeling of a boy walking alone and crying with a bar of chocolate in Medyka, on the border between Poland and Ukraine. She condenses all the helplessness of war into one image. Children and the elderly are the big losers of wars. The basements of Ukraine are full of old people who would rather stay at home than be a burden to their children. And women are always the ones who sustain life while men kill themselves on the front. War, like life, is a matriarchy.
Are all wars the same?
They are pretty look alike. They have to do with boundaries, with hatred, with races. The paradigm of what a civil war is is a family house divided in half that I saw in Sarajevo. Men, I’m not talking about the military, fight for something tangible, not so much for the country. If they take away what you love most: your house, your land, your loved ones, and you have nothing to lose, you can become a monster. We can all. Me too.
There are those who don’t want to watch dramas and don’t watch the news because they get depressed. What do we do?
Those are like the flat earthers, or the deniers. We have divided ourselves, we form groups, we feed each other and we only see information that reinforces us in that increasingly smaller group. That is why it is so important to do more journalism, and more international journalism. And when I say international I mean, even, outside your neighborhood. Talk about others, whoever they are and where they are.
And now that?
I aspire not to become a stock and exchange agent, that is, to go on errands, or a geek. The other day I saw Pedro Piqueras, who has just retired, walking around the PSOE headquarters, as if incognito, and greeting a colleague from Telecinco and it made me laugh, because, soon, I will be like this. I have many hobbies: motorcycles, golf, swimming. I leave when I am most prepared, when I know how to do my job best, because you learn to tell stories with the camera over time. I don’t have a monkey yet, but I will, for sure. But, whatever the case, we will continue to report.
BAD SEAT ASS
Miguel Ángel de la Fuente (Ourense, 62 years old) officially retires from RTVE on September 28, the same day he will turn 63 years old. He has many three-year terms and a lot of experience behind him in his 35-year career in public television. He has covered tours of France, cycling tours of Spain, Olympic games, electoral campaigns, festivals, hurricanes, earthquakes and, above all, wars. All the great ones in the world have been, from the Balkans to Gaza. This Galician “bad ass” arrived in Madrid at a very young age as “a hustler” and hasn’t stopped since. Separated from his first wife and father of a daughter, he married the former socialist Minister of Health and Foreign Affairs, Trinidad Jiménez, whom he had met on a work trip to Latin America, when she was a high official and he covered the expedition as a graphic informant. Cirilo Rodríguez Journalism Award 2023, De la Fuente says that he already misses his job before leaving it.
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