It is strange to see and hear Pedro Piqueras, with the clear forehead of Pedro Piqueras and the unmistakable voice of Pedro Piqueras, in street clothes calmly having a coffee at 11 in the morning, and not in a suit and tie giving the evening news on TV. We chatted in the canteen of the Ateneo de Madrid and the photographer later photographed him, to his delight, in the office that Don Manuel Azaña had in the house. He has two news programs left, I tell him as we say goodbye. He laughs and specifies, “no, he's left for me, from Monday to Thursday, from today until December 21.” That day he will bring to the Telecinco Editorial Team “Hungarian salami, Manchego cheese” and came to toast with his team, and will bring to a close a 50-year career in television, radio and the press. I suspect he wants it and fears it in equal measure.
Why Hungarian? The salami, I say.
Because it is very good and because I want the best for my team, they are the best and they have been wonderful years together.
In other words, it is a 'gourmet'.
Let's say I'm an indulgent, I'm fatter than I'd like, and I go on a diet a lot, but then, many nights, I go to the TV machine and get a chocolate palm tree, the truth is that the sugar rush It is good for the stress of live.
Why are you leaving, why now?
I've been wanting to go for two years. I noticed my age was beginning to weigh on me, as if the terrain on which I walked changed, I was not as agile as I was to make the quick decisions that this job requires, and I thought about leaving. I said it on the network. They asked me to stay. Then came Ukraine, the devilish election year, Gaza, the inauguration, and you say to yourself, how are you going to leave? I stayed out of responsibility, until, with the investiture resolved and a new news chief, I said: it's now or never.
Iñaki Gabilondo He retired, at 80, because he was “bored” of listening to himself. Does he understand it?
I will use a bullfighting simile. I'm like the bullfighters at the end of the season: stuck. They don't know whether to fight with the left or the right, they do everything, correctly, by trade, but there comes a time when they know they have to stop. Furthermore, I have been doing the same thing for 34 years, going out at 10 at night, without a social life. I am 68 years old. Not everything is work.
They say that Borja Prado, outgoing president of Mediaset, wanted to enter the kitchen to politically influence the channel's content. Do you know?
He never entered my kitchen. She left it there.
His colleagues give homilies every night. How do you editorialize?
I don't editorialize. I am not an evangelizer, but a channel, a narrator of what is happening. I never stand next to anyone, it is essential to keep distance. I learned factual journalism at a young age on Spanish Television. And from my teacher, Jesús Hermida, not to raise one eyebrow higher than another: from him, who couldn't stop moving his bangs. Of course I have my ideas, I am progressive, but I only give my opinion when undemocratic borders are crossed. Nobody knows what I'm about. There are still those who ask me to my face, and I consider it a triumph.
He has an older son, but he was also a baby. How did you reconcile?
Bad, like all journalists. The fact that I am lucky that they have always made my life easier and that no one ever held it against me does not change the fact that I have been an absent father at times. At a time when I was working on TVE's morning program and got up very early, my son, who was 6 or 7 years old, said to a bricklayer who was doing a renovation at home: you really work, not like my father, who spends the day sleeping.
I think he chose his successor, Carlos Franganillolike king father, or patriarch of 'Succession'.
Ha ha ha. Well, let's say that I helped Paco Moreno, Mediaset's new news director, decide. Franganillo seemed like the best to me. I have met him in several coverages, which is what I have always liked most as a journalist, getting on the ground, and I once suggested it to him. I think, in a way, we are similar. We maintain a distance with the information. We don't show ourselves. I don't know what he's about politically, he's in top shape, he speaks languages, he's the future.
Their poker faces are famous when they gave way directly from the 'Sálvame' circus to their news. How was he handling it?
Isabel Pantoja's niece naked in the snow has directly given way to me, or Raquel Mosquera, whom I know and appreciate, sending me “a big kiss” in the middle of covid, with hundreds of deaths every day. That should never have happened. I got very angry with the situation, but then I called Raquel to apologize because the story didn't suit her, one thing doesn't mean the other.
Does he leave with a withered forehead?
Well not so much. I leave with less hair, and white. I have been losing it in this profession, especially in recent years.
I think his baldness is bad.
Let's see, if I had a terrible time I would have done something about it. My father was bald, this was sung. Now I even like my profile as a Roman senator and I comb my hair back so that the effect is more appreciated.
Continuing with the tango, 50 years of profession are nothing?
They are a lot, and at the same time, a sigh. I have really enjoyed this profession. I have also suffered my own thing, hence the gray hair.
Why has he suffered more?
For not reaching news, because they step on it, for not having been fair, above all. I am a big ruminant and I take my worries home. I try to do a very honest job, not belligerent, tell things as I think they are and if you realize that you have failed, you have a hard time.
Does it also suffer from audience data?
The data does not matter as much when you win as when you lose. When you lose, it hurts you.
Well, he will be very hurt because his news program has lost its audience.
I was a leader for 11 years, which is said to be early, and stopping being one sucks. But the data does not depend only on one, but on what you have before and after on your grill, and what is in front of you. I have carried it out with the peace of mind of doing a good job with the circumstances and means you have.
Information is not exactly Telecinco's priority.
True: in the era of augmented reality and media displays, I have always had a rubber band behind me with the skyline I think from Singapore. In exchange for not having investment, I have had absolute freedom. Now that information is going to be the big bet of the house, my colleagues will enjoy it. Let's say that I have been like Moses crossing the desert and now that the Promised Land is in sight I get off. He left Franganillo a clean house and a great team of great professionals as colleagues.
It will no longer give way to more “apocalyptic images”, as in a video yours that circulates on YouTube.
That's some funny guy who put together the three times I said it, in a loop. And then, the comedian Raúl Pérez, imitated me on his program by chaining them together. At the time I got angry with him. But one day, on Cadena SER, I met him, we talked and now we are such friends that we even go on vacation together.
I think he prepares some outrageous paellas, despite being from Albacete. Who taught him?
And I play the anthem of Valencia sung by Francisco at full blast. María José San Román, the chef at the Monastrell restaurant in Alicante, once told me that the cooking time depends on the altitude of the place where you cook. And, in the mountains of Madrid, where I live, that is just the time from when you put out the fire until you serve it. Thus, my guests shed tears twice: first with the hymn and then with the rice.
And now that? Many 'stuck' bullfighters end up returning to the ring.
Now, go to dinner at the places people go. Do yoga. Learn piano, which is a way to concentrate on something and leave your mind blank. I have a lot of things to do and I already have offers to give talks, but first I need to detoxify. The problem will be the first day without an agenda. Let's see who I have lunch with. I don't want to beat people up. I already miss TV, and I haven't left yet. Without TV nothing will be the same.
Does he leave with more pain or glory?
With sadness, a lot. The glory is not for me to say.
How is it to read your own work obituaries while you are still alive?
Ha ha. It's funny how people talk about you in the past tense. And also pleasant, because the obituaries are, in general, affectionate. As they say in Sunrise, which is no small thing: I am contingent and the others are necessary. I did what I could with what I had. I have never made the perfect newscast. I'll leave that to Franganillo.
The most tense day
The most tense day of Pedro Piqueras (Albacete, 68 years old) in front of the cameras was not 9/11 or 3/11, but December 14, 1986, the day of the first massive general strike in Government of Felipe González. “Televisión Española went black and only that news program was broadcast, as a minimum service; the unions were in front of me, imagine the responsibility, we had 100% of the audience in front of us,” recalls now the one who would be RTVE's head of news, before to jump to private TVs.
His passion for narrating current events had begun when, before even starting his degree, he began to write in the Albacete branch of the newspaper Town, at the age of 18, while cultivating a love for music that even led him to sing with the Nuevo Mester de Juglaría. Now, after half a century of professional career, almost always in front of the cameras, the director and host of the evening news program on Telecinco, his last professional destination, and one of the most popular faces in the country, says goodbye to everything. that. Or, at least, see you later, because he admits that, before he leaves, he is already missing him.
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