There are television figures who generate consensus. Consensus for the better, it is understood. An entire generation grew up fascinated by the ability of one Jordi Cruz for crafts. He broadens the spectrum to “generation and a half.” Those children from then have children today, and that religion of scissors and glue at the turn of the century is still being transmitted, “like Star Wars fans.”
The Jordi Cruz who appears through the Zoom window sports a medium length of gray hair and a shadow of a couple of days’ worth of beard. The years go by for everyone, even for that boy from Barcelona who premiered at the Disney Club at 19, touched the sky with Art Attack at 21 and retired from general national television with Megatrix at 32. That was 15 years ago. years. Perhaps that is why his return generates expectation. Perhaps, also, because the small screen to which he returns with his new adventure reality show, Yolo Race, is not exactly the same one from which he left. Now it fits in the palm of your hand.
“Art Attack generated a great impact and transcended the simple children’s program, it became an element of union for the family and it continues to be,” Cruz acknowledges, “people continue to send me messages and I love that they continue to accompany me today, that that magical bond that was created is maintained, I still don’t quite understand how”. Although Art Attack abandoned Jordi Cruz in 2004, he has never abandoned it. He continues to define himself, above all, as “artemaniac”, and has continued with the crafts through his social networks.
“I have always been a little rare as a communicator”, he confesses, “and I have never seen myself in that closed and corseted panorama in which if you do not go on television you are not communicating”. His thing, he assures, are the new formats: “If I had been born at the time when YouTube grew up, I would have been a youtuber, I am convinced.” Halfway between television and social content is Yolo Race, an acronym for You Only Live Once, which combines the best of an adventure reality show with the interactivity of TikTok.
Six influencers, a week in the Yucatan Peninsula, countless physical, orienteering, and gastronomic tests, all packaged in five chapters shot vertically and divided into three (TikTok times make it necessary) that can take up to seven points of view: those of each of the contestants and that of the presenter. None of them have a clue what will happen tomorrow. Sort of like the modern version of “choose your own adventure”. “I jump headlong into these super-new things,” says Cruz, to whom the idea came tailor-made by email, as he was already questioned as a member of the team: “I thought they were wrong, but he does not remember.
The protagonists of this first season are the magician Inmagic, (12.8 million followers), Jonata (7.9 million), Sergio Jurado (7.1 million), Tania, alias Thanix (4.2 million), the professional of parkour Jose Tengiz (3.5 million) and the Paralympic athlete Marta Casado (Two million), and their fame crosses borders… and oceans. One day they were recording in a small town and ended up on a kind of stage: “School had just finished and people began to arrive, and people, and people, they even came on motorcycles because they knew them,” recalls the presenter, and clarifies, between laughs: “Not me, on the other hand.” He acknowledges that she liked that role “Peking Express roll, like Raquel Sánchez Silva imposing authority.”
For the result to be completely immersive, the filming is almost as important as the broadcast. A classic television crew joins the six cell phones of the content creators, who each recount his personal experience on camera, without a script or filters. The amount of material on the last day was such that the team spent a sleepless night downloading hours and hours of images. “So if you are a follower of one of the content creators, you can see the chapter, but also how he has experienced it,” explains Cruz.
The videos move at a frenetic pace, constantly appeal to the conversation with the viewer and are full of viral memes. Not surprisingly, the production company behind the program is the video platform for gamers Gamestry. “They have been able to read the language of the platform very well, the synergy between videos, the very naturalness in the consumption of content on TikTok,” acknowledges the presenter. He himself has had to ask for help to learn how to publish his content in the first person. “I am learning, but the first day my face was a poem”.
The only thing that has frustrated Jordi Cruz from his particular return to television has been spending a week in Cancun and stepping on the beach for just 15 minutes. Perhaps he made up for it by not participating in the gastronomic test with insects on the menu: “I saw the dishes and thought: don’t let this touch them, please. And it touched them, it touched them,” he recalls with a gesture of disgust. For the next season, which is already on the table, Jordi Cruz prefers a colder place: “Iceland? I’ll take the week after vacation!”.
-And you would not return to television?
-I would come back if they call me, but it’s not like I left my phone number, really.
Jordi Cruz’s thing is crafts, it’s seen. Even to reinvent the small screen.
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