Rebecca Palacios
Logroño, (EFE).- Stories told in the first person have allowed viewers of Diario Vivo this Saturday to discover the “vision of the future” of Carmen Díez de Rivera in the transition, verify the ambiguity of the Iranian regime and learn how the exclusive of the death of the gorilla Snowflake by the “compadreo” between politicians and journalists.
The Logroño municipal auditorium has hosted this ephemeral show of live journalism, organized by the UNIR Foundation, which is neither recorded nor reproduced in a later edition, so each chapter of Diario Vivo is unrepeatable.
El País journalist and writer Ángeles Espinosa, La Vanguardia diplomatic correspondent Xavier Más de Xaxàs, journalist and co-founder of El Mundo and El Español Ana Romero, Le Figaro correspondent Diane Cambon and film director and screenwriter Santiago Tabernero have been the narrators who have participated in the show.
Along with the communicators, representatives of the International University of La Rioja (UNIR) have intervened, such as the dean of the Faculty of Business and Communication, Pablo Cardona; the researcher and director of the Degree in Physics, Alberto Corbi; and the Director of Operations in Latin America, Ana Yangüela.
Between each testimony, the pianist and composer Maite Arregi Díaz has linked each of the stories told with her music.
Living journalism platform
Diario Vivo is the first and only live journalism platform in Spain, based on a format that is already established in cities such as San Francisco, New York, Paris or Helsinki.
For this reason, its creator, François Musseau, has thanked the UNIR Foundation for having had the “audacity” to bring this highly original and successful format to the capital of La Rioja.
Since its premiere in Madrid in 2017, Diario Vivo has given visibility to hundreds of causes through the voices and stories of renowned journalists, artists, photographers and writers, with plans for new editions this year in Zaragoza, Barcelona and Toledo.
Iranian ambiguity and Carmen’s courage
In her speech, Ángeles Espinosa, a journalist from La Rioja who specializes in the Arab and Islamic world, recalled her stay for 5 years in Iran, where she circumvented the prohibitions on not leaving Tehran to conduct interviews with critics of the regime or cover protests.
However, his journalistic work bothered the Iranian regime, which made it difficult to renew his visas and press permits in 2011, because they did not like “how he reported”, but in a country where ambiguity is “the essence of ”, so that “the regime rarely lies, but it never tells the truth”.
“Things have gotten worse over the years. I do not keep a bitter memory, I remain with the help I received from friends, translators and colleagues, that is why Iran will forever have a place in my heart ”, he assured.
The journalist Ana Romero has reviewed the life of Ana Díez de Rivera, of whom she wrote the biography “El triángulo de la Transición”, a woman well ahead of her time, of whom she has highlighted her “dignity and courage” as chief of staff of Adolfo Suárez in the first government after the Franco regime.
“Carmen had the knowledge of the street and the drive, while Suárez and the then young king Juan Carlos were more leisurely. She met Santiago Carrillo in 1977 and two months later the communist party was legalized. In her diaries, she wrote, she said that they had given the most natural lesson in coexistence, ”she has indicated.
Snowflake
The diplomatic correspondent for La Vanguardia Xavier Más de Xaxàs has recounted how he went from covering information from the White House to having nothing to write about, after his unexpected return to Barcelona in 2001 after the attacks on the Twin Towers.
All his proposals for reporting or investigative journalism were rejected by his director, who ordered him to “suck on the bench”, to which was added the death of his father after a tennis match, which convinced him that “life can change in an instant.”
Without entrusted tasks, he became fond of visiting the Barcelona zoo every day, where he was able to learn that Snowflake, the albino gorilla and a whole “reference” for his generation, had skin cancer and only a few months to live.
“He was Barcelona’s mascot since he arrived in 1966. He was the king of the zoo and he knew it, he was haughty, lazy, not very smart, the typical alpha male,” he joked.
However, the president of the zoo asked its director to keep the exclusive on his death for him one day, but he leaked it to local television, which taught Más “something fundamental: there is no small news” and the audience You don’t have to pay for the “compadreo” between politicians and journalists.
Finance, research and cooperation
In Diario Vivo, Pablo Cardona recalled his time as a consultant and how he had to blend a team of Portuguese managers with another of Spaniards, after the purchase of Shell by Repsol; while Alberto Corbi has taken advantage of caring for his mother with dementia to carry out research on sleep with sensors that apply artificial intelligence.
Ana Yangüela from Logroño has paid tribute to her parents, the doctors Joaquín Yangüela and Pilar Criado, who have involved their four children in volunteering and helping the most vulnerable, even making them start an NGO in the Dominican Republic, thanks to make them understand the word “coexistence”.
The proceeds from ticket sales will go to the Cocina Económica entity, which manages a soup kitchen in Logroño, among other initiatives to support the most vulnerable population.