One spends half a lifetime hearing their voices. He recognizes them the second he hears them, more easily than those of some relatives. They are, for many, the most truthful and close daily contact with external reality. And, during the confinement caused by the coronavirus pandemic, those voices on the radio acquired extraordinary value for many who lived through it in imposed solitude.
This is how Pedro Espadero understands it, the artist behind the official Alicante bonfire of these Fogueres de Sant Joan 2023, Geoda, who wanted to reflect his homage to the Alicante radio journalists next to the monument, which he listened to in the solitary quiet of his workshop. There are the current ones and some of their predecessors, such as the fabulous Vicente Hipólito – “do me the favor of being happy” – or Raúl Álvarez Antón, a great “radio player”, as he liked to be called and as the street that bears his name says in the San Blas neighborhood.
Today, a few hours before the big festival of Sant Joan, of the purifying cremà in which the monuments will burn -the first is the Geode that attracts the curiosity of tourists in the Town Hall Square- we wanted to know how they tell and live the festival some of these esteemed and esteemed voices from local radio.
Juan Carlos Gumiel is remembered when he was only 7 or 8 years old carrying the heavy banner of the Pius XII bonfire, “then they made it lighter,” he smiles. Born in Alicante “and a staunch defender of everything that is ours”, Gumiel recalls that at COPE, his station, “before we had many more hours of local broadcasting (something that all radio stations have in common) and we broadcast specific programs dedicated to the Bonfires and Holy Week”.
The staff of “experts” was extensive. “My radio teachers started it: José María Roselló, Rafa Rodríguez, Paco Vigueras… and then I stayed in charge,” says Juan Carlos, who jokes: “we almost included the concept of mascletologist in the RAE”, referring to the brainy analysis that connoisseurs carry out after each pyrotechnic shot that takes place at two in the afternoon in the Plaza de Luceros.
Gumiel has seen them in all colors from his privileged position during the mascletá. “Every day is a miracle,” he points out, “thousands of people gather, sometimes at almost 40 degrees, and it’s hard to keep up; I remember a very nice interview in which the guest couldn’t take it anymore and we fainted, the disappeared and great Manolo Escobar, that we had him half an hour in the sun, the poor”.
At that point, the Plaza de Luceros, they all meet during the week of festivities. Carlos Arcaya, in charge of the mornings of Radio Alicante (SER), Luz Sigüenza, on Onda Cero; and Denis Rodríguez, host of the local COPE magazine, carry out their programs in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the nerve center of Las Fogueres.
The three have something in common, which they share with half the population of this very cosmopolitan city: they are adopted children of Alicante, but as deeply rooted as only one whose profession has brought them into contact with everything that a city offers can be. : greatness and misery, tragedies and joys.
To the point that Luz Sigüenza, who attended her first cremà in Florida-Portazgo, recently arrived in Alicante, without knowing that the firefighters were going to drench her from head to toe, in 2022 was nothing less than president of the jury in charge of choosing the Bellea del Foc. “I didn’t know what the banya was, they cornered me against a wall and made me lose it; it was my literal baptism in the bonfires,” she says.
From that baptism to her consecration as president of the jury of the election, more than twenty years have passed, and Luz has “always” worked in the week of Bonfires, so she knows the party very well from the inside… without having been able to participate with the insouciance of the partygoer on foot. “I would like to be able to live a year in peace, because when you live it working it is not the same; you are aware of everything, of anything you can tell, the reactions of each other, if there are no incidents… I would like enjoying it again in the street with the people, getting wet with the firefighters like that first time”.
Everyone remembers, as Luz explains, the times when more streets were used, “you didn’t use the phone so much, and you had to go as fast as possible to the neighborhood where the winning bonfire was,” to gather the euphoric reaction of the partygoers. Or when it was time to follow the fiery burning of the official bonfire from the balcony of the Town Hall, as it was the turn of Carlos Arcaya, recently arrived from his native Vitoria in 1993: “That impressed me, the magic of fire that is talked about; it I had seen on TV, but covering the cremà was spectacular”.
Carlos recalls the wisdom of Raúl Álvarez Antón, “who knew everything”, or of José María Roselló, a colleague from COPE. Among the incidents that he has experienced first hand, he remembers the year in which the peculiar hoarse voice of councilor Pamblanco exclaimed “this doesn’t even burn with cannon shots!” while a newly elected mayor Alperi tried to calm an outraged crowd before an official bonfire that refused to burn.
Among the figures of the party, Arcaya recalls that of Ramón Marco and the veneration that was professed to him, “as if he were God”, or Pedro Soriano, who suffered the fall of the odd auction, and Ildefonso Prats, beloved Fire Chief , “a very particular, endearing guy, who combined his part as a foguerer and a professional”. Personally, from the festivities he keeps the monuments that, taking advantage of his status as a runner, he sometimes visits while running.
Denis Rodríguez also came from the Basque Country, he is from San Sebastian, but he has lived in Alicante since 1986, when he was barely thirteen years old, so he still lived his first parties from childhood fascination and amazement at the spectacular color of the monuments. Already on the radio, in COPE, with Gumiel conducting the morning program, the long-suffering wireless of the mascletá was his first fogueril destination.
Denis fondly remembers Manuel Ricarte, the president of Holy Week in Alicante, also closely linked to the bonfires, who collaborated every day in the program and died one night in June in full festivities. Like many Alicante residents, when he was young he enjoyed the banyà more, but over time he has come to appreciate other aspects of the festival, such as the parade of bands -“the offering seems long”- and the party in the street: “at night , no longer; now in the afternoon, that for a reason those of the 70s were the inventors of the afternoon”.
And it is that Denis belongs to the generation that enjoyed the free concerts and the popular shack, customs that passed away: “Alicante must be one of the few cities that does not have free municipal concerts during the holidays; it is a pity, although then there is a good programming in summer”, he laments.
And he goes back to his business, to the microphone, to renew -like ‘Gumi’, like Luz, like Carlos- that daily pact with each listener, with each person who, like Pedro Espadero in his workshop, gives them his listening, at times his attention, in exchange for the precious gift of kind company.
