Well, stupidly, this week marks the 50th anniversary of my arrival in journalism. Few will remember it, but in 1973 there was a Minister of Education, named Julio Rodríguez, who had the idea that the university course would start in January, so he had just finished COU (university orientation course), what the previous generation called Preu , and looking for a little job to entertain myself until classes started, I came across an advertisement in the now-defunct evening newspaper El Noticiero Universal in which they were looking for an assistant.
There I went, to the editorial office of Llúria corner Diputació, in Barcelona, ??ready for anything. I had enrolled in Economic Sciences and it had not even occurred to me to dedicate myself to journalism, but I passed the test, which consisted of an interview with a venerable deputy director who went to lunch while he left me a text to type. Since it took a couple of hours to come back, I was able to repeat it two hundred times and presented it to him pristine. “Can you start tomorrow?” he asked me and I answered affirmatively.
The next day, December 13, 1973, I woke up with a fever but still went to work. My employer saw me in such a bad way that he sent me home and, after a week in bed, I returned to my new job on the 20th. Since the Ciero was an afternoon newspaper, I started a job at 6 in the morning that consisted of cut teletypes and leave them on the tables in sections. The old people of the place, who were the majority, ordered me “girl, do this”, or that, and the younger ones didn’t even pay attention to me, while a cartoonist gave bullfighting passes with the previous day’s newspaper as a cape.
At that, the shouting began, the running began and everyone came into the teletype room in droves, separating me from my task. It was just after 9 in the morning and news of the attack against Carrero Blanco arrived from Madrid. That was a crazy day and I, who had just arrived, was fascinated. “This is the bomb,” I thought, and not because it ended the life of the then President of the Government, but because I clearly saw that this was my place, my home, my passion and my life. And here I am still, celebrating my jubilee.
