«I needed professional help because I was going to face a big emotional change»

2023-10-01 11:42:14

‘Saved’ returns with a new season that starts with its presenter’s most personal program. The journalist Fernando González ‘Gonzo’ (Vigo, 47 years old) travels to his hometown to meet with former students of classes, family members and teachers to reconstruct the history of his school, Santiago Apóstol, one of the centers indicated by journalistic investigations where sexual abuse and physical attacks were suffered.

The format, which celebrates fifteen years since its premiere in 2008, returns this Sunday to La Sexta (9:30 p.m.) to give voice to victims and attempts to do a therapeutic exercise on situations that affected a generation of students.

–What made you take the step to tell this story?

–It was a very long process because it is a personal story. ‘Saved’ has been more than just a professional job. You get older and start talking to other people, and you see that your school life attracts a lot of attention. Then you realize that maybe what I experienced I shouldn’t have experienced. You begin to discover that what was in the past also conditions your life and way of being. All of this has been a personal process, although it is true that when cases of stories of sexual abuse in the Church begin to emerge, I begin to locate the history that we live at school. It was not something isolated and it was an issue that had and had to come to light. I had to overcome that fear and the process was not easy either. I needed professional help because I was going to face a big emotional change.

–Was it your environment that convinced you to do this program?

–Many things convinced me. How many times have I picked up the phone or talked to people to convince them to sit down with me and tell me a horrible part of their life? That call is still the one you have to make internally. If I’ve done that with other people, am I now going to be the one who doesn’t want to get naked knowing the benefit that work can have? On the other hand, I wanted to arm myself with a security that I didn’t have before doing the program. And I also said: ‘damn, if that person who suffered abuse has told something more serious than what I experienced, how can I not do this ‘Saved’?’

–Was it therapeutic?

–It has been completely therapeutic. Making this ‘Saved’ meant something that I think has a lot of value in life, which is overcoming a fear. Don’t let it condition you. I overcame it and that is something that helps you have more confidence and security. Besides, you see that you have done the right thing. It has not helped me to close, but it has helped me to accommodate certain memories and, perhaps, to take very bad responsibility for some things that happened in my life, and to understand that they could have been conditioned by the environment from which I came.

“Abusers have no defense”

–Did you try to locate or interview some of those teachers and priests who abused students?

-No. The point was to listen to those who suffered it and those of us who lived with it. To those children who, at 11 years old, see a classmate arrive with semen on their hand. How does that affect you? How do you remember the way you react? And the teachers? What the abusers did is known and has no defense.

–What can we do as a society to repair the damage suffered by the victims?

–Listen first, because those who tell it have that need. The adults who have agreed to tell it now have discussed it for years. And we also have to take a stand against all of this.

–Can you reveal the next songs for the new season?

–We touch on topics that are usually common in what we call public and published opinion. There are some issues, such as for example that it is known that in Spain more than 800 people die each year while working. But what happens when a person dies at work? Why does she feel obligated to go to a job, even though perhaps the conditions are not necessary? How does it affect a family? We want to tell it by listening to those who live it and suffer first-hand. But we also want to address happy stories. We want to get closer to people in this new season. In addition, there will also be politics, which are evidently very much alive right now.