2023-08-17 04:31:38
As a child, Ramón García, ‘Ramontxu’, wanted to be “the cura o torero». “Children’s things,” he adds jokingly, although the truth is that he has ended up filling places, being a master of the cape and concentrating the parish around him.
And, there are the data, it is a consecrated figure: impossible to find in this country someone who has been asked to deliver more proclamations for town festivals than him. He always says no. He wouldn’t do anything else if he accepted.
We were talking about data, well here is one: his return with the ‘Grand Prix’ to Televisión Española this summer has exceeded the 26% audience. Like when there were no more entertainment screens in the houses. He explains his secret in simple terms: work and intuition.
Take on the chop since i was 13 years old, when he began to lend a hand in his father’s hospitality business in Sodupe (Vizcaya), the family town where he spent his childhood. A town that, according to Wikipedia, adds 4,200 inhabitants. Perhaps that is why she has never participated in the ‘Grand Prix’ (towns of between 5,000 and 10,000 go). Until Sodupe we return in the conversation to learn more about Ramón García.
With all of you, the presenter who triumphed with ‘Qué apostamos’, swept the ‘Grand Prix’ in 1996, became a must-see with his iconic Spanish cape and has returned to TVE through the front door, removing more than a stomach in the offices of the chains that did not see what he did see: that the format of the ‘Grand Prix’ it was not dandruff nor was it moth-eaten. He, even less.
Ramón, does everything come back in the end?
Not all. But for what has remained in the hearts of the viewers, it is worth fighting for it to return, right? It is what I have done for the ‘Grand Prix’ and here is the result.
He has given the chimes together with Ana Obregón, Carmen Sevilla or Paloma Lago ABC
Why just this year?
Every year executive producer Carlo Boserman and I have tried to get him back. We always trust the format. This year after 18 years neither more nor less, TVE, which was where it was born, called us to do it.
That of the 90s, remember, was another Spain. Also television. ‘Qué bet’ started in 1993. In 1995 came ‘When the sun heats up’. “Four towns, with a lot of swimming pools,” she explains. “It was a bombshell.” But it was only the appetizer. “The following year we included the heifer – he speaks of her with nostalgia: ‘the law prohibits it, closed debate’ -, we gave it a spin, we put a Spanish touch on it and that was the huge bombshell.”
Did it surprise you?
At that time the audiences were bigger. But ‘Grand Prix’ swept. It was spectacular. He averaged thirty and forty-something shares, when the averages were 25 or 26 percent. It has always worked very well. It is very attached to the tastes of the people, it is easy to see. It was eleven consecutive summers, which is said soon.
How has the way of watching TV changed since then?
TV used to be watched in company, with the family. Curiously, the ‘Grand Prix’ has been seen like this again and all the messages that come to me go there: «I have seen the ‘Grand Prix’ again with my grandfather». “I am watching it with my children, which they did not do because they got into his mobile or his tablet.” We have reunited the family in the summer in front of the television with an event that is much more than a program. The ‘Grand Prix’ is the family link. It’s the only program that does. The other, nowadays, are the chimes. The only events that you can see in the living room are the grandfather, the father, the son and the grandson.
Can we say that he is a presenter who unites families?
All the formats I have done are always very familiar. That was the name of a program that I presented: ‘Todo en familia’. Watching TV alone is like drinking alone. When you watch an entertainment show, things happen: look what a hit this one has taken! Seeing it alone is a macabeo roll.
Today TV is seen with social networks, does Ramón García do it?
I have Instagram because Gloria Santoro put it on me. I don’t have my back to them, but I don’t have time. That is why in this ‘Grand Prix’ we have Cristina López, ‘Cristinini’, a great communicator [viene del mundo del ‘streaming’, directo en redes].
Gloria Santoro is the presenter who works alongside him on ‘En compañía’, the daily program broadcast live on CMM by Castilla-La Mancha television, from Toledo. Like a Tinder for seniors, she helps combat loneliness. More than 1,600 people have passed through her set and some 800 couples have formed. [¿Se acuerdan de que García de niño quería ser cura?]. And if the presenter defends his ‘Grand Prix’, pay attention to how he does it with ‘In company’. First, invitation:
«I would like many people who see the ‘Grand Prix’ to see it too. It has nothing to do with it. It is a program in which there is another Ramón, because Ramón is a presenter who adapts to formats. What do the chimes have to do with the ‘Grand Prix’? ‘In Company’ with ‘What do we bet’? Nothing. There is only one common denominator that is Ramón García. I put my personality, my way of communicating, my way of approaching the viewer ».
At the national level there is no program like his, but, beware, he warns: «There will be. We have been here for 7 years. Who gives first, gives twice”. He remembers that when they started he was already talking about a pandemic. Not the coronavirus. “There are already countries like England where there is a minister who is dedicated to solitude, in Japan, in Norway… all this is already happening.” Not just older people. «In small towns it also happens. There are pastors who, when they finish their work, where are they going to meet a girl? We have had several 40-year-olds find a partner here and get married. Imagine that all of Spain sees this. There are so many people who live and die in solitude…».
García assures that this program has marked him: «It has changed my lifeIt has made me value what we have in life. When you listen to grandparents who lived through the war, the postwar period, who went hungry. The people who worked all their lives, who never had vacations, who sacrificed everything for their children…”.
“We live in an absolutely false society that claims to care for the elderly but then does not listen to them”
And yet, he continues, “we live in an absolutely false society that says it wants to take care of the elderly but then doesn’t listen to them. He locks them up in residences, leaves them in the summer. How many have been left alone? Does anyone account for that? Why not? Because it’s embarrassing.”
He assures that his program is “a window that helps to fight against that loneliness” but “sometimes the children criticize it, because the inheritance is equally endangered, because who will take care of the grandchildren? That’s what grandparents are being used for. It’s tough, but I see it every day.”
Because, from Monday to Friday, Ramón García is with them on the screen. Remember that he has never stopped working. Next February, he warns him, he celebrates 40 years of office. Since 1984, when he started in Los 40 Principales de Bilbao, until today: “I will have done something right.”
What is left for him to do on TV?
Everything Everything everything. I’ve done a lot of things, but do you know what’s left for me? Today’s program. Every day is an adventure. I am lucky to do a daily program. Almost three hours live where many things happen. It’s not that I keep fit, it’s that I’m an athlete. A 61-year-old presenter who is going to turn 40 by profession is for something, not a mere coincidence. You have to always be training.
He likes to keep up with trends – we have seen him with Ibai Llanos on the Twitch platform -, not to miss the new programs that are successful in other countries… But, above all, he boasts, he does not lack intuition: «I tell my team that I have a misfortune because when I say something I am never wrong. They laugh”. He returns to the ‘Grand Prix’. He offered his comeback to all the national networks. «They told us ‘no, this is already dandruff; is old’. The hot potato has exploded in more than one of his offices ».
Imagine a blank check to do that program you have in your head…
A night program, a variety show, one of those of a lifetime. Nobody who makes music has a place in a national program. I do bring my program (from CMM), the other day Pancho Céspedes came. In the ‘What do we bet!’ I have presented to all gods, national and international. I would like to do it again. That Naomi Campbell or Anthony Quinn come to an interview that is not a roll, but face to face, fun. A choral thing: with Sabina presenting her new album, with Miguel Ríos and her new song, with a kid who plays reggaeton, with comedians. And live. I would be the master of ceremonies, the ringmaster of the circus, I control it very well. It is a format that is missing today.
He says that in Spain it is being done «a lot of televised radio»: «Five or six people sit down and talk. That is not television, television is spectacle. Word of star presenter.
#Watching #drinking