“It is the Salvados that has cost me the most to do because for the first time I am the protagonist.” With this warning, Gonzo will start the new season of Saved this Sunday. Because this time and for the first time in the 13 seasons of the program, the story will not be about others but about him: the physical and sexual abuse he experienced at the Jesuit school in Vigo.
“It has been a very powerful emotional journey and I have not been able to do it alone. I have had the support of professionals, my family, my friends, colleagues…”, the journalist reveals to us.
We spoke to him hours before the big premiere and he confesses that “he is nervous, more nervous than on other occasions.” It is not for less. “It’s not just because of what the program tells, it’s also because I tell a part of my life,” he says.
The first-person account of Gonzo, that of his former colleagues and that of the victims of this sexual abuse will give many people goosebumps. Gonzo was also given it, but the journalist, the former student, needed him to succeed: “I am very proud to have felt capable of doing it.”
He doesn’t want to give more details about this season, but we managed to get more out of him than “many things.” “Last season the last Salvados dealt with the accusations of abuse by Plácido Domingo, the sexual harassment that women suffer at work and in this season we have been very aware of everything that has happened with the Spanish soccer team. But we have also been (and we are) very aware of the political situation, which is what it is, and we are going to have protagonists in this farce,” he assures. And with this farce we start the interview.
Salvados does not start with any politician, but it starts strong. Not only because Gonzo recounts a life experience as brutal and inhuman as being a child who, even though he did not suffer sexual abuse, did suffer physical and emotional abuse from someone who “is supposed to be like your second father,” but because in this new season the intention of the program, the producer, Del Barrio, and the team was to “deal with the issues from below.” That is, anonymous, everyday people who “are the ones who suffer and those whose lives are conditioned.”
I want my son to watch the show with me so he can see what a child can and cannot accept.
It was difficult for me to have self-esteem, confidence in myself. I keep remembering all that when something goes wrong
Gonzo gets serious. In fact, throughout the conversation he gives the impression that he is holding back. “Suffering sexual abuse goes beyond being intolerable, but it was not just sexual abuse,” he answers when we ask him about those abuses that were not just sexual.
“It is still the final expression of an environment, of a system that existed in the way of education. There were students who were made to see that they had no value. The physical abuse is real, but the slaps did not hurt me that much. like the insults that teachers subjected me to in front of my classmates. When a teacher insults you, humiliates you and does it in front of everyone, those insults are repeated after your classmates, and it affects you,” he says.