That Ana Rosa Quintana chooses a black dress for the farewell press conference of El Programa de Ana Rosa is no coincidence. Nineteen years ago, practically just given birth-she had given birth to her two children two months ago-she started dressed in white because she “had to wear white.” This Thursday she chose black and she was the one who confessed that “I’m wearing black because I’m finishing.” He laughs, a sad laugh, but not nostalgic because “one cannot live on nostalgia.” As if it were a funeral, almost with the same sadness, but at the same time with the emotion of a new beginning.
Now Ana Rosa Quintana, who at the end of September will arrive at Telecinco’s afternoons with her TardeAR, wants to “have fun”, make a clean slate. And, although she was already the queen of the afternoons with Sabor a ti 30 years ago, she knows that society has changed and that people do not want what was programmed in the afternoons at that time: “The viewer wants something different and that is why there will not be anything similar to Sabor a ti or anything from El Programa de Ana Rosa”.
She reveals little about what TardeAR will be, although if you insist she will tell you that she has already chosen the set, the collaborators – it has only been announced that Manu Marlasca, a journalist who leaves laSexta to take charge of the events part of Ana Rosa’s new program, will be among them -, the director and that it will last approximately three hours, and nothing more “because there is still a lot to do and from Tuesday I am going on vacation yes or yes”.
Ana Rosa Quintana holds back tears; They are released for her by her partner, friend and sister Xelo Montesinos, CEO of Unicorn Content, and dedicates a few words of thanks to Mediaset: “Mediaset has let me work freely. They have never given me a suggestion or told me to be careful. If they had told me, I don’t know what would have happened.”
That gratitude for having let her work these 19 years without any interference and for having always trusted her, her producer and her team was what led Ana Rosa Quintana to say yes, without a single one but Alessandro Salem. She reveals the journalist that since the new CEO of Mediaset came to replace Paolo Vasile, he already warned her that she wanted her in the afternoons. She turned a deaf ear and a few months later he brought her together again and told her ‘I need you in the afternoon’.
Like a mother who hurts to see how her son becomes independent and leaves home, Ana Rosa Quintana also hurts to say goodbye to her program. to her little one, but she is not afraid of what may come. Yes, nerves, “of course”, but right now he doesn’t even want to think about it: “When that bridge arrives, we’ll cross it.” And Xelo Montesinos adds: “Better not think about it now.” But it is inevitable to think and remember.
“19 seasons are a lifetime in the mornings of Telecinco. I have seen life, my life, go by sitting on the set between January 10, 2005 -two days before his birthday- and July 25, 2023,” he acknowledges. “Now I will leave that place that has been my home. I don’t want to look back, but I have the feeling of leaving my family, like when you leave home at 18. I am aware that a wonderful period with my family is coming to an end, but at the same time I am looking forward to knowing what the future will bring me in the new season. I know that I have to look for life in a new environment, start from scratch,” he says.
At the moment, TardeAR still has a long way to go, but Ana Rosa Quintana is clear that “it makes no sense to bring morning to afternoon” and that she wants to make “a modern program” where there will be everything that is happening. That is, if there is politics, there will be politics; if there are events, there will be events and if there is a heart, there will be a heart. What will not be their already mythical and also controversial editorials. And before that he also has something to say: “I am me and I think what I think and say what I think. I do it conscientiously, whatever the subject (…) I will have been wrong, we will have been wrong many times, but always from honesty. “
And given this, it is inevitable to ask about the prominence that journalists like her, like Vicente Vallés, like Pablo Motos, Carlos Alsina or Silvia Intxaurrondo have acquired in this electoral campaign, becoming targets of power. Ana Rosa Quintana collects her own words and says what she thinks: “It is unpresentable. We have been subjected to real harassment in recent months because the powers that be have decided that good and bad journalists. Journalists have every right to control power (…) Many lines have been crossed and I would have liked to have received more support from my colleagues.”
But it is not a day to remember the bad, it is his goodbye, although the last program will be on Tuesday and it may come with surprises – “I have asked Alberto Núñez Feijóo for an interview because I know he is going to beat Alberto Núñez Feijóo and I want to interview him” -, and it is the farewell of a lifetime.
“I feel that emptiness that you have when you stop seeing your loved ones every morning and the vertigo that comes from changing habits,” he says. “But as the saying goes, no one wrote about cowards,” she says when asked about the pressure from audiences for the new show.
With an average share of 17% and 462,000 viewers, El Programa de Ana Rosa, the longest running morning show in our country, with 4,654 broadcasts. it has led every month of the season, surpassing its direct competitor by 4.5 points (12.5%). It has also prevailed in the commercial target with a 17.7% share, a parameter in which the distance with its immediate competitor has increased to seven points (10.7%).
“Looking at these 18 years with perspective, I am aware of the record we have set in the history of television: 18 years leading the mornings against all odds, with fierce competition, at the height of the importance of this television slot”, she affirms as a proud mother. And he adds: “When I sat down every morning, when we prepared the rundown, my only red line has been to be faithful to the feelings of the citizens, to be sincere. We have denounced what they wanted to denounce, we have told what worried them, we have been critical when I played and we have tried to raise our voices so that everyone could hear what was happening in the streets, in the cities and in the towns of our country”.
And as Xelo Montesinos says, holding back his tears and looking at his friend with the complicity that always accompanies them, “I always think that [Ana Rosa] is not going to make it and she always pushes forward.” She says it knowingly because despite the success and despite the great family of El Programa de Ana Rosa there have been very difficult moments.
“I have had to overcome personal and professional difficulties in these 18 years, I have always found the strength to move on (…) It is said soon, but you have to be there and get up for 19 seasons in a row at six in the morning with the spirit and energy necessary to do a four and a half hour program, because when the red light on the camera lights up, you are there alone in front of the audience, and you are the one who hits or misses.”
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