Alonso Caparrós (Madrid, 1970) touched the sky with his fingers at ninety. Son of the journalist Andrés Caparrós and brother of the television presenter, who is also Andrés, he made his debut at the age of 20 as a collaborator of MarÃa Teresa Campos in TVE’s Pasa la vida magazine. In 1998 he achieved fame as the presenter of the Furor d’Antena 3 contest. A phenomenon for three years. Then Little Stars would come. Life looked good.
But the presenter fell into hell. What initially started as a flirtation with drugs turned into a serious addiction problem for 20 years. “I reached a limit where the only option was to die or survive”, he reveals in conversation with La Vanguardia. After recounting this experience in the first book, Un trozo de cielo azul, he has now just published Empieza de cero, in which he shares the keys that helped him overcome the stage when he broke family ties and became financially ruined.
Alone, without work or money and almost without hope, the first stone on the new path was found in who would end up being his partner, Angélica, a speech therapist and therapist “with special qualities that have to do with understanding, kindness and patience”. With her the change began. Partnering with books, discovering the power of solitude, working as a volunteer in a hospital or regaining ties with his two children – Claudia (18) and Andrés (15) – were some keys for the exchange.
As were memories, “which have a latent power for both good and bad things”. It is appropriate to review and polish what has happened in our lives “to draw good conclusions and, above all, not to repeat unnecessary mistakes”. They must also serve us “to recover from oblivion the people who had a positive influence on our lives”.
Other allies on this path to a new life were books. From Tolstoy to Buddhist philosophy. “Reading seems fundamental to me, but I don’t see books in it, but human beings who tell you their story through a novel or directly from their personal experience and that at a certain moment in your life you it can be of great use”.
Another tool to start from scratch was experiencing retreat and the power of solitude to reconnect with oneself and achieve inner peace: “It works really well for me to go away by myself for ten days a couple of times per year, in the most isolated way possible. All the noise and distraction above us dissolves. You see both the world and yourself more clearly, and that helps a lot.”
In 2017, a media war broke out with his family after he was invited with his father to the Deluxe, where they exposed their differences. He had the press behind him and fled with no fixed destination. The first four days were hellish, but little by little he found the charm and now continues to do so. “A month and a half ago I went to the Pyrenees”.
A learning experience. “The family is the most solid of all. It’s not worth trying to impose our truth, but the most important thing is that time passes and magical moments go away”, says Caparrós. In the book, he also explains the importance of regaining bonds with children. “They were getting used to my absence and I was unable to start my reconstruction without them.” A trip to Auschwitz and another through France closed the cracks.
In the book, Caparrós gives some “advice” (“I want to always be humble”) that he found useful, such as the volunteering that began in 2017 in a hospital and that has continued on the weekly agenda ever since: “You allows you to compare your suffering with that of others: parents who see their child with a horrible disease, someone with quadriplegia, people who are all alone and did not choose it…”.
This contrast “makes you touch the ground and confronts you with your own mortality,” he says. “I have seen friends die and you see how then it is imperative to be at peace and solve the problems you may have had with friends and family; it is important to have it resolved without the need for the moment to arrive. You live much better”, he recommends.
