Telecinco Xavier Sardà: "Aznar wanted to end Crónicas Marcianas, but Mediaset and the Catalans resisted"

Xavier Sardà says that one day Chicho Ibáñez Serrador went to Crónicas Marcianas. During lunch that day, the legendary director of Un, dos, tres and Historias para no noche, expressed his disagreement with the director of a television program being also the presenter, as was precisely the case of Sardà in the legendary program. from Telecinco. “It is very difficult to be a presenter and director of a program,” Chicho told Sardà with that almost impossible-to-listen tone of voice so common for the producer. “It’s very difficult for everyone, except this son of a bitch.”

That “son of a bitch” he was referring to was none other than Sardà himself, the man who for eight years made millions of viewers wake up every morning dead of sleep because of an idea that was not his, but that with Over time he internalized it so much that it almost killed him: Martian Chronicles.

That day in July 2005 when Sardà said goodbye to all the viewers, it was clear to him that Crónicas Marcianas had ended and that he would never again work on a program with that schedule and that required so much effort. Until the day Carlos Latre called him and told him: “Martian Chronicles deserves a reunion.” Sardà did not hesitate. Just a program, nothing more, a tribute that Telecinco broadcast last week with audience data that the network had not obtained for a long time. Because? Because Crónicas Marcianas changed the life of Sardà – in the first three months alone he earned 300,000 euros – and of his entire team – a collaborator who arrived, a collaborator who rose to fame – but it also changed the lives of many Spaniards.

Would there be a possibility of doing The Martian Chronicles again today? We ask Sardà, the answer will surprise you. “Martian Chronicles ended because I decided to, because I couldn’t take it anymore, the schedule was killing me and I don’t want to go back to that,” he assured us on the day of the special’s presentation. A day in which Sardà returned to do what he did every day 25 years ago: the impossible. Bringing together the most notable collaborators, bringing together in just over two hours of program hundreds of contents that would be unfeasible to be broadcast today. Crónicas Marcianas was a work by Joan Ramon Mainat, to which Sardà gave its own life.

Every night for eight years, Xavier Sardà, the ideologist along with Mainat and Jorge Salvador of that incredible madness, said the same thing to everyone who participated in the program: “You guys do whatever you want and enjoy that I’m in charge of it.” control all this.” With that phrase and with the most surreal ideas that crossed his mind he made The Martian Chronicles every night. As crazy as two hours before the program started, asking for a hospital stretcher. That’s what it consisted of, “never knowing what could happen.”

The greatness of Crónicas Marcianas was the time in which it was broadcast because it allowed you to do everything

Xavier Sardà was, in fact, the only one who did not go there to have fun, although he inevitably did. He knew what he was doing at all times and transgressed all the standards that existed until then on television. The presenter, who was 40 years old when he was asked to lead the format, remembers with nostalgia the arrival of GH and OT on television and what they both meant for Crónicas Marcianas. “We hijacked the OT bus, which was then broadcast on RTVE, and we put them on the program with the consequent anger of the directors of Telecinco and RTVE,” reveals the presenter.

In Sardà’s memory, the most tense moments of the program, which were not few, are housed in a place that is impossible to access, but it also happens with the good ones, with the funniest ones. When you ask him what that moment was for him that his memory remembers as the best from his mouth, only one name comes out: Galindo.

Sardà knew Galindo since he was a child. He was like another member of the family, a lifelong friend of his sister Rosa María. So when he had made the decision and took charge of Crónicas Marcianas, he called him: “Hey, Galindo, I have something that might interest you.” The theater actor’s response left Sardà excited: “Well, let’s see, I don’t start working before eight in the afternoon.” “And, that, I was without a penny,” he remembers.