Terelu Campos knows very well what she is talking about when every year, selflessly, she collaborates with the Ausonia and the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC) campaign, characterized by the pink scarf. The presenter went through two very difficult periods until she finally had to undergo a double mastectomy. This year she is accompanied by her daughter, Alejandra Rubio, making the motto perfect.
“I am tremendously excited that Ale is with me because she has experienced my two cancers, one when she was very little and the other when she was of age, and the sensations of a girl are different from those of a little woman. My main goal is to be alive to see my daughter grow up happy.” To her daughter and her grandchildren, if they come. “Grandchildren? Now that she is 23 years old, she is? Come on, I’ll break his face!” jokes the presenter.
Alejandra remembers those days like this: “The first time I was not fully aware; Yes, partly because she told me about it and made me participate, but in a very natural way. My mother took it with a lot of humor with me and we didn’t experience it as a drama: when they gave her chemo, she spent the day with my grandmother, slept with her and the next day she took me to school.” Terelu is convinced that having gone through this double drink made her daughter mature: “Without a doubt. But it also happens that only children who have grown up are usually more mature. Her teacher told me this when she started school; And since I was little we were at home with vowels, with numbers… I think I have a particularly intelligent girl. Although, well, I am her mother.”
Alejandra was introduced to the media world on a cover of ¡Hola! She came sponsored by her last name, although that is not enough to ensure her presence on a set. Five years ago she did not dream of going so far in such a short time: “It was never my goal in life, but the opportunity arose, I took advantage of it and I am in two programs and very happy. Meanwhile, I continue finishing my degree,” says the young Interpretation student.
Of course, both agree that the wise advice that María Teresa Campos gave her granddaughter has been fundamental. Terelu remembers with humor how demanding Alejandra’s grandmother was: “When I saw her on television, she would tell her: ‘Alejandra, if you keep saying that little tag, I’ll stick out my hand and give it to you, eh?’ My mother was very strict and my daughter learned a lot from her,” says Terelu. They also agree on not entering into the dirty game that Edmundo Arrocet opened two weeks ago in a magazine telling intimacies of his relationship with María Teresa Campos. “I have nothing to say. I am not going to talk about this person, I have never done so and it will continue like this. I do want to express my eternal gratitude to her son Maximiliano and her daughter Estefanía for the messages of affection, grief, pain and respect towards my mother.”
Terelu is comforted by having seen the immense affection that both viewers and press, radio and television professionals showed towards María Teresa Campos. “I was very clear that the public loved her because I have experienced it firsthand. It is not something that anyone could have told me, but rather I have lived it. I appreciate it very much but… I live in the duality that my mother has died. I cry for my mother. I suffer from not having my mother,” says the presenter.
We change the third to a kinder scene: the reception at Moncloa for her and her sister, Carmen Borrego, on the morning of Teresa Campos’s funeral. Is President Pedro Sánchez as handsome up close as he is on TV? “Mr. Sánchez has a fachón, as they say in my country. A plant that you die. And also he is very nice.” They paint the occasion as bald but Terelu doesn’t mind: “I never say who I vote for. But we have received not only the condolences of Pedro Sánchez but also of Mariano Rajoy, Santiago Abascal, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the mayor of Madrid was at the funeral and three ministers were also there… That’s just how my mother was: plural.” A presenter who introduced political talk, an exclusive area for men who smoked on set, in the morning magazines: “Fundamentally what my mother did was dignify the women who were in her house, with politics or without it.”
