Madrid (EFE).- The SGAE Foundation and EFE have presented this Tuesday the first edition of the Carlos del Amo scholarships for cultural journalism, in an act that has served as a tribute to a journalist who lived “for and for music” and introduced “color and light” at the Agency where he worked until his death in 2020, said his partner, Carmen Sigüenza.
The emotional event, held at the SGAE Foundation headquarters, was attended by almost a hundred colleagues, friends and relatives of Del Amo, who promoted the first internship program sponsored by both institutions, as well as the president of EFE, Gabriela Cañas, and from SGAE, Antonio Onetti.
As Cañas has highlighted, “there is no greater recognition for a professional than that of his own colleagues” and “it is evident that Carlos has it”, he has remarked”.
He has also referred to the “great school of journalism” of the Agency, where about a hundred people are trained simultaneously, he has calculated. “In this case we removed Carlos from anonymity, but there are many very powerful people,” he remarked.
With the decision to give the scholarships the name of a journalist -for the first time- the aim is to “project the journalistic spirit of Carlos del Amo to the new generations”, explained the director of the EFE School of Journalism, Carlos Gosch.
These internships were devised and promoted in 2005 between Del Amo and the journalist Fernando Neyra (then responsible for communication at SGAE), and since then “more than twenty journalism students have worked in the EFE culture newsroom, learning from the best professionals of the sector”, said the director of the General Society of Authors.
“He put his sexual diversity on the table”
Since he started in the Teletext section of the Agency in 1987, Del Amo (1962-2020) went through Sociedad (from where he jumped four years to the Ministry of Education, which was then directed by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba); for Culture and Entertainment, and the direction of Nacional, where he held the position of deputy director.
“I went to the ‘expo’ in Seville, premiering the AVE, I lived the Olympics, I wrote a biography of Mecano. It was a very happy period, they even made me a boss at work. What would you say to Carlos back then? Well, how lucky it is to have touched happiness for so many years ”, Del Amo himself recounts in a video that has been projected.
In the Culture and Entertainment section, Del Amo “raised the music department, and made a signature” with chronicles about artists he admired such as Madonna and Michael Jackson and interviews with also national artists such as Rocío Jurado and Sara Montiel. “He lived for and for music”, he recalled in his partner Carmen Sigüenza.
But he has also highlighted another important facet: “Starting in 2000, he put his sexual diversity on the table” in a “still macho newsroom.” “He wanted to be a normal and accepted person. He was not a revolutionary or a transgressor, he even he was somewhat conservative. But he did want it to be treated normally, to put his foot on the wall. He got it, and that did a lot of good, ”he recounted.
He has also underlined the “courage” with which he faced the cancer that he was diagnosed with in 2013, a year in which he also divorced and his mother died. “It was an example. It was pure theater even in chemo, he liked performance, fun, and he infected you with it”, Sigüenza highlighted.
For her, one of the keys to Del Amo was that “he grew older but did not lose the illusion of being a child”: “He was a good teammate, he made a team and defended his people”, in addition to having an excellent organizational capacity and professionalism wherever he was.