“More than giving lessons, what we want is to share experiences so that the viewer feels accompanied and can see that what happens to them and makes them suffer so much, has happened before to other fathers and mothers.” This is how Gemma Nierga defines the spirit of Farem el que podrem, RTVE Catalunya’s new self-produced space with parenting as the common thread that premieres this Saturday on La 2 at 9 p.m. Before that, the first episode of Això no és Suècia (8:20 p.m.) will have been broadcast. the series created by Aina Clotet and starring herself and Marcel Borràs that also addresses the difficulties of motherhood and fatherhood. With these two productions, RTVE Catalunya opens a new slot on Saturday nights dedicated to parenting.
We will do what we can, emerged from RTVE Catalunya’s internal ideas contest promoted during the time of Oriol Nolis as director of the center. Quique Quera proposed this space to reflect on the current parenting model and in which there is dialogue with celebrities such as Jordi Basté, Judit Mascó, Eduard Farelo, Elisenda Roca, Òscar Dalmau, Clara Segura and Elena Gadel, among others, to discover how they are as fathers and mothers The program is completed with the opinion of anonymous witnesses, experts, children and adolescents.
“The program is not intended to give recipes or advice but to accompany, which is what Carles Capdevila, one of the first journalists who was interested in parenting, did so well,” continues Nierga, who acknowledges following the path of this journalist who died in the 2017.
But some lessons can be drawn from this accompaniment, right? “Yeah. I’ll say one. I interviewed Àlex Corretja and Martina Klein, who are a couple, but each one has raised differently. He, because of her work as a tennis player, has done it with a lot of discipline while she has educated in a more artistic and open way. Recording the program I realized that I had done it more like Martina but that I wish I had been more like Àlex,” responds Nierga, mother of Pau (18) and Arnau (14).
The journalist, who continues to run the Café d’idees on La 2 every morning, explains that there is one element common to all fathers and mothers: “The desire to do the best possible. And the feeling of not having done well and of having been wrong at many times is also very common. And it is very difficult and complicated to educate children… but not impossible,” says the journalist, who is grateful for the generosity of all the well-known faces who have shared their upbringings on screen. She mentions, as an example, the case of David Selvas, “which talks about the moment they decided to become parents and the difficulties his child went through: he had two parents and he was black. He had to fight and combat many stereotypes.”
Director Quique Quera reviews the list of experts, psychologists, teachers, educators and pedagogues who have passed through the space such as Miriam Tirado or María Luisa Ferrerós. Nierga especially remembers the participation of the teacher Montse Freixa, who stated that she has gone from one extreme to the other and that now she listens to the creatures too much. “Before it was said ‘today there is macaroni’ and now ‘hello, children, we hope you like the food very much’ in a tone that practically invites boys and girls to reject macaroni.”
“Now we listen to the creatures so much that it is difficult to maintain the discipline that I mentioned before. Parents are the ones who have the criteria and the last word. If there is macaroni, there is macaroni and that’s it.” Nierga also highlights the participation of the adolescent expert, Alba Castellví, who contributes an interesting proposal: “When we talk to a teenager we do not have to interrupt him, we have to let him speak and listen to him well. And once he has explained to us what he wants to tell us, then we can ask and accompany.”
Children and adolescents of various ages also participate in the program. “Those from 9 to 11 years old tell you that their parents are perfect and that they have educated them very well, while those from 14 to 16 are already more critical and see that perhaps they would do it differently,” compares the presenter. In Farem el que podrem they also tell “beautiful stories of anonymous people such as the struggle and overcoming of a father who lost his wife in childbirth and had to face raising his son alone,” Nierga highlights as the last note of the new program.
