Pepe Domingo Castaño, the most recognizable active voice on Spanish radio, died suddenly in the early hours of Sunday. He had been suffering for a few days infection in that throat who for more than 60 years sang, presented, announced and got stuck when he had to defend his colleagues and friends live and private.
Jorge Hevia knows this well. During the 2010 Super Bowl broadcast he read a very unfortunate SMS from a listener criticizing a former advertiser. The company complained to the station, which decided to file charges against the current producer of Game time (COPE) and suspend one month of employment and salary. This measure triggered the whirlwind that changed the history of sports radio in our country in just one summer. Paco González was separated from Sports Carouselhis longtime program, for defending Hevia.
“In the first Sports Carousel without Paco, there was a more or less explicit order to do the work and not to turn a radio program, which was not ours, but from Cadena SER, into a tribute to Paco, and more about how things were and how they were going to with lawyers and so on,” explains Jorge Hevia to EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA, from the Prensa Ibérica Group. At that moment, Pepe Domingo Castaño “made a splash,” he points out. “He said yes to everything they asked of him, he sat down his microphone and started the program doing exactly the opposite of what they had suggested he had to do, more or less explicitly, which in Pepe’s case I think was quite explicit. He didn’t care.” The one from Padrón It took him only 20 seconds of the program to pronounce the name of his beloved on-air partner..
“At that time, the protagonist was Paco González and Pepe stood in front of the demonstration, when he was a person who had already done everything at a professional level and who could have not gotten involved and finished his career at SER, where, surely, He had tempting offers. He put ahead of all that feeling of loyalty and friendship towards Paco, mainly. Pepe took the flag and we all went with him,” remembers Jorge Hevia. After 18 years of Sports CarouselPepe Domingo and dozens of colleagues decided to leave Gran Vía to move to Alfonso XI, to the COPE headquarters.
They have been in that house for 12 years now. Pepe Domingo explained in The Playtime Book (Libros Cúpula, 2012) that the vacations in his Galicia helped him “grow inside and convince myself that I had made the right decision to choose my friend Paco over my company until then, Cadena SER”. The announcer with whom all the brands wanted to advertise was going to turn 69 and, almost from the first seasons on COPE, there was a question whether that September was going to be the last.
The eternal renewal
“Pepe always “I was wondering if I renewed, if not, if I had to go and rest, but in the end I always renewed.”says Hevia. And so it was until this last summer. In that eternal resistance, there was a key holiday: this year’s La Paloma festival, which is celebrated every August 15. The creator of ‘Pepe, a cigar!’ called the team to Cava Baja, a journey full of bars that the announcer recalled in a recent Amazon Prime Video documentary and in which Casa Lucio is located. “He liked to use these holidays as the starting signal for the radio course. 10 or 15 people would get together and he would invite a lot. Many people said that it is because he had a lot of money and that he could afford it, but I have met many people with a lot of money and they were very ungenerous,” defends his partner.
In that last festival in La Paloma, they gathered at La Taberna del Capitán Alatriste, next to the Cava Baja, “to eat and hang out, which is what we older people do now.” “We ate, talked, laughed and went for a walk in the middle of the last big heat wave in Madrid. We went to have a drink at Juan Bravo and chat about the new season, about the new advertisements that were going to come in and we were looking for tunes for them, between laughs. That day she didn’t sing,” Hevia recalls with joy.
This summer, his intention to leave radio when the season ended seemed more credible. “In June, he sent a message to several of us and told us that he had decided to renew and continue for another year, but with one condition, ‘without which I will not continue on the radio: That on August 15 we all get together. If you don’t all come, I won’t renew.’“says the producer of Game time, who has been working with Pepe Domingo since he joined SER as an intern. The threat was not necessary: ”There was no need for such a measure of pressure, because we loved going and hanging out with him, as we would love hanging out without him to remember him. Up to that point it was important for him that we be united and enjoy life.”
The journalist Germán Dobarro, who met Pepe Domingo on one of his visits to the SER studios in A Coruña and who ended up becoming an essential piece of the future project at COPE from Galicia, also received that “extensive and reasoned” message in the fact that The voice announced that his farewell was near. “He said it and probably even thought it, but I didn’t believe it. Pepe was the radio and it is very difficult when you are the radio to separate yourself from yourself“, he affirms. That threat of abandoning the radio could never materialize, because “he wanted to die with his boots on.” “He enjoyed the radio so much that, in one of his last statements, he said that the day he left, he would I would go, but ‘you know what I mean by going with capital letters.'”
He said, and probably even thought it, that he was going to retire from radio, but I didn’t believe it.” Germán Dobarro. Sports journalist COPE Galicia
That’s how it went. “I knew that his end had to come this way, but it is true that, although he died as we all would have liked to die, eating life in bites and having a great time until the last moment, the shame is that he left us at 80 years old and not with 90,” laments this colleague, with whom Castaño exchanged continuous winks on the air. His death came too soon. Although he was already 80 years old, that age was only reflected “on the DNI.” “Anyone who came to dinner with us would be amazed, because Pepe was an 80 year old boy and for us, a kid from our group has left.”
Mariachis and Toni 2 at big parties
His colleagues told him that he was a “master of radio and life” and this was demonstrated in the countless nights he shared with them. “He was a monster on the radio, but he taught us many things about life. He insisted a lot that all the meetings he called, the lunches, the dinners, the getting together, continued, because he felt the glue. And it was“says Jorge Hevia. “Everything started from him. He always waited for the call from him or the message from him to notify all the Sports of Galicia workers to organize a dinner. I needed to be generous and enjoy people“Dobarro corroborates. “Without these meetings, without getting together outside the radio and without laughing, we will not be what we are inside the radio. “Don’t stop doing this when I’m gone,” he stressed in each meeting.
“He really liked mariachis. In the important parties that Pepe organized, “A mariachi group always had to appear at some point and it was a lot of fun.”highlights Hevia. Pepe Domingo Castaño organized the Christmas meals, reserved the place, spoke with the restaurants and mobilized the entire team to Toni 2, the emblematic piano bar on Almirante Street. “It was very nice to end the night at Toni and for Pepe to beg a little to sing. He was looking forward to it, at the end he sang and the place collapsed with applause from those of us who knew him and those who didn’t, and “He puffed up like a turkey, because he needed that affection from his people and from the people,” recalls the producer of Game time. Pepe Domingo “did a lot to earn that affection and he really liked receiving it, even though it took a lot of asking.”
He did a lot to earn people’s affection and he really liked receiving it, even if it took a lot of asking.” Jorge Hevia. Producer of ‘Tiempo de Juego’
“He spoke the same way with everyone”
“We were on the program talking with our correspondent in London, Paloma García Ovejero, and the topic of Pepe’s book came up, Until I run out of words: My memories of radio and life. Paloma said that, if we had the nerve to go there, to London, where there were a lot of people who loved Pepe and the program very much, she would fill a room for us and give a presentation. Paco González began to say below: ‘Pepe, don’t get hot.’ Pepe was already warming up, and Paloma told him that they were going to eat at Quique Dacosta’s restaurant, who was a big listener to the program. And Paco: ‘Pepe, don’t get hot.’ And, in the middle, Pepe said: ‘All of us in masks are going to London, I’ll invite you.’ And Paco: ‘he has warmed up’. He paid for a trip to London, plane, hotel and invitation to eat at Quique Dacosta’s restaurant for 15 people,” says Jorge Hevia.
Already in a full room, with about 200 people, a small space was set up so that anyone who wanted to come and talk to Pepe Domingo Castaño could do so. “He was there as long as those people wanted, there was no clock,” point. It was accessible to everyone. “He enjoyed the people below and those above. He didn’t care exactly the same. He could talk to the interns as naturally as he did with the CEO. And, outside of our company, he spoke with the general director of a bank just like he would with any guy he had just met who had a bar in I don’t know where,” says Germán Dobarro.
Jorge Hevia himself certifies that statement. When he was doing an internship at Cadena SER, when he was 20 years old, he hardly dared to say good afternoon. “I was afraid to go up and have a conversation with these people.” During a trip to Galicia with some friends, it occurred to him to write to Pepe Domingo, who was in the area. “‘Hey, Pepe, we’re in Galicia. We’re going to stop by where you are. If you feel like it, we’ll have a coffee or a beer before eating.’ I was an intern who had practically just arrived at the editorial office and not only We had coffee and beer, but he also made a reservation for us to all eat together, also with Tere -his inseparable wife-. For me it was a pride to be eating with Pepe Domingo Castaño. Of course, he invited us all.”
“It was impossible to get along with him. He was a child, he was excited about things, he could sulk and at home they called him Marquis of Grumpy, but they were angry as children. There was no chance of him holding a grudge. The negative moments passed quickly and the positive ones were always there: the desire to laugh, to have fun, to sing, to play. How are you going to get along with that person?” Hevia pays homage. Germán Dobarro, sad for the loss, says: “It leaves a void… that no one can imagine to what extent.”
2023-09-21 04:50:32
#Pepe #Domingo #Castaños #condition #renew #COPE #festival #wont #renew
:quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/FHBTMYFM2ZHYRAWCCGMXJHSJSQ)