Life doesn’t make it easy, in Kiko Rivera (Seville, 1984). Recovered from the stroke he suffered in October 2022, life seems to push him back into the corner, now not to think, but to rest. On Thursday 13 July he granted some interviews, such as this one, to present his return to music with El Mambo. His excitement didn’t last long: on Friday the 14th he was admitted urgently to the Vithas Sevilla hospital due to a heart problem for which he has already been successfully treated. On his Instagram account, Kiko thanked everyone who cared about him, with special affection for his wife, Irene Rosales, and his mother. Isabel Pantoja has been up to the task of visiting her son at a very complicated time, even though the always close relationship broke up three years ago. Irene Rosales is his wife, but also his guide and pillar.
Today’s Kiko Rivera, father, husband and centered, has nothing to do with that misguided young man who spent the nights regardless of the dawn. This is the assessment I made for La Vanguardia on Thursday: “My biggest mistake was living life as I have lived it, without measure. I’d be lying if I said I regret it, but if I could change it, I would right now. The best? I am proud of the family I have been able to form, despite many obstacles. And to have gotten ahead by my own means: I come from a family, and I have no problem saying it, in which everyone lives off my mother. And for many years I did not want this for myself; I’m proud to say that being able to stay in this and live without working, I’ve moved on with my work.”
This family is Irene Rosales and her two daughters in common, Ana and Carlota. His firstborn, Francisco, lives in Bilbao with his mother, Jessica Bueno. Kiko spares no praise or thanks to Irene every time she is asked. He has it on an altar: “I’m a lucky man, macho. She is a piece of woman on the outside but above all, on the inside, an excellent mother who changed my life at the time and who continues to take care of me. My father from heaven, I always think about it, is the one who put this being of light on my path that guides me through the good life”. A life that requires a few more days of rest for a DJ who returns with El Mambo and with the lesson learned after a forced catharsis: “The stroke has changed my life: I have reconsidered many things and what better way than to come back with music that conveys happiness, which is the moment I’m in right now. I consider that I have a second chance and I don’t want to sell sorrow, but joy”.
And when Kiko was celebrating the positive medical report yesterday, the end of the Mediaset veto was coming, the media group that has kept him away from the cameras for almost a year. This is how he explained his version of the conflict on Thursday. “Before the veto arrived, I had already decided to withdraw from it: when I recovered from the stroke, I gave an interview to Canal Sur saying that I no longer wanted to know anything about Telecinco. Following this, the veto appears. In this sense, it has been good for me to focus on my work”. May it last
