Jump with a parachute?
I have done 1,165 free fall jumps.
What does that do for you?
The door opens… and my adrenaline rises.
Do you need it?
It vitalizes me. I love getting excited. I am a romantic! I started jumping when I was 18 to impress a woman.
Look for the woman …
It doesn’t always turn out well. But I enjoy life a lot.
Does love or the parachute not work out?
Both. I saw a good friend get hurt. He didn’t open his parachute. There was not a trace of the poor man left.
Where was that?
We were carrying 120 kilos of impedimenta when we jumped…
What does it say?
We carried light weapons, including missile launchers to shoot at the track of a tank and slow it down.
Missile launcher!
In the Foreign Legion: there I was.
What is the Foreign Legion?
Elite corps of the French army, with very high military training, with soldiers from 140 countries.
But… what were you doing there?
Search for death.
Sorry?
Several times I recklessly exposed myself to bullets so that one could finish me off. I was just looking to die. It didn’t happen.
Did he really want to die?
I joined the Foreign Legion because my life had lost all meaning and I was lost, sunk.
What had brought his life so low?
I fell in love with a wonderful woman, Blanche-Claude, whom I called Poussin (chick), and we got married and had a son together, Alfonso…
Like you.
One day I pick up a phone call… and it’s a civil guard, who tells me that…
…
A car accident: my wife and son dead.
I’m sorry.
I ended up in Africa, fighting African warlords who mutilate children’s arms and legs, who rape and kill.
Did you kill?
What tailor hasn’t pricked himself with a needle?
Can you tell me any details?
I owe it to the confidentiality of the body. I’ll tell you that the Marines… are babysitters next to the Foreign Legion.
What psychological mark has been left on you?
I appreciate life more. I am more peaceful. I value dialogue more.
How long did your wish to die last?
I gave my life every day for my companions. I survived. I steeled my nerves. And one day I decided to live again. And I was hurt.
Was he evacuated?
Every legionary wounded in battle gains French citizenship, he is français par le sang versé (French for the blood shed).
Is it easy to live in society afterward?
I always try to help. Although I deplore those who complain: “My partner has left me”… Come on, the world is overflowing with beauty!
Well yes.
The daring comes from my father: from Andalusia he went to France to work in construction, we lived there…
Rescue a childhood memory.
One night in July we had dinner on the terrace: I saw the moon in the sky… and at the same time on our TV, the man was stepping on the Moon!
Beautiful print.
A happy and formative childhood in France.
What vocations did you have?
We returned to Spain when I was thirteen, and I got hooked on Íñigo’s Directísimo and put on the Bigotísimo show at school: I was Íñigo, of course!
Did that make you a journalist?
Years later I met José María Íñigo: “I am a journalist because of you!” I told him.
What journalism have you done?
Correspondent in Kuwait, and before in Nicaragua: I saw CIA agents helping the “contras”, weapons for cocaine… The United States is a country of hardware dealers!
¿Ferreteros?
Weapons manufacturers.
Who would you like to interview?
To Bin Laden. I know how wars work: he’s still alive, that’s for sure.
But you left the wars behind…
Then I collaborated on TF1, Paris Match, Primera Línea, La 1, with Javier Cárdenas, and with Alicia Senovilla, Susanna Griso, on Tómbola on Channel 9…
Gossip magazine?
Respectable if done with dignity: questions with respect and rigor, without those little characters that populate the sets today.
What journalism are you missing?
A good topical debate: today there are too many slogans and a lack of respect for the truth.
