Everything in life has an origin. And that of the musical radio formula in Spain was Radio Minuto, a small station from Barcelona that imported the format from the United States in the eighties and marked a time before and after. Four decades later, the book Radio Minuto: la historia (Círculo Rojo) vindicates and remembers the success of “an innovative and fresh station that would still be valid today”, in the words of the author, Agustín Rodríguez.
“The formula based on music and news 24 hours a day meant the arrival of a style of radio that did not exist in Catalonia and Spain; this was the great revolution of Radio Minuto”, affirms Rodríguez. The station was created in Barcelona in 1982 by Marcelino Rodríguez de Castro and in 1985 it was already the absolute leader, with more than half a million listeners in Barcelona alone.
The peculiarity was to combine the tune, the time, the temperature, the information, a song and the advertising in blocks of five minutes and repeat the formula 24 hours a day. In addition to innovation, the station also had another factor in its favor: having the latest musical news “thanks to agreements signed with American record labels that allowed Radio Minuto to be heard there, before any other station , Michael Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Diana Ross, Elton John, Phil Collins and also Spanish artists, such as Miguel Bosé, José Luis Perales or Julio Iglesias”, Rodríguez reveals.
Radio Minuto de Barcelona assembled a very young team. “For many it was their first job”, points out Rodríguez, one of those who precisely began their professional career at this station. The book collects the testimony of more than 30 professionals who went there, such as Toni Clapés, Toni Peret, Quique Tejada, Carlos Losada, Francesc Xavier Monfort, Ricky Romero and Santi Cardús, among others. There were also female voices, such as Esther Eiros, Pepa Álvarez and Esther Pardo.
In the news section, Radio Minuto had a group of journalists who, among other achievements, managed to speak with Salvador Dalí by phone from the room where he was admitted to the Pilar clinic or with the president of the Generalitat in person, Jordi Pujol, who was woken up more than once to ask him for a political assessment.
The station was also a pioneer in including service information, such as the weather and traffic in the city, “which at that time no one gave”. He also promoted the Minuto de Oro awards, with which they awarded, among others, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev when they signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons; La Cubana, for her first theatrical shows; Xavier Cugat, Franciso Umbral or Paquirri.
But Radio Minuto had a short life. La Ser bought the format in 1990. The frequency, however, remained in the hands of Rodríguez de Castro, who founded Radio Tiempo, and who followed the same formula. But, after changing tunes, music and announcers, “the power of that radio formula and, above all, of that brand was blurred”. An untimely farewell, but his legacy lived on.
