The 1 fits Run around the worldBBC’s successful format, which becomes ambitious from this Wednesday Until the end of the worldpresented by Paula Vázquez. The former president of the Community of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes, and the model and television collaborator Alba Carrillo form the most disparate celebrity couple of the six who make this journey through the different cultures of Latin America, traveling alone, on a minimal budget. This Zeppelin format travels through eight countries (Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Chile) and more than 15,000 kilometers in total.
Cifuentes and Carrillo are the only ones who have not had a previous personal relationship. Both have things in common, such as having been regular faces in Ana Rosa Quintana’s television universe, before Carrillo became a public enemy of the veteran host. And they also have many things that differentiate them, such as their political position.
Ask. Why did they agree to compete in an extreme format with someone they only knew by sight?
Alba Carrillo. Cristina seems to me to be an interesting woman, who has also experienced a lot. In a program of this type, about survival and adventure, it is an ace in the hole.
Cristina Cifuentes. And Alba gave me the impression, from what I had seen, that she was an intelligent, funny, fast and hard-working person.
Q. Alba, you usually support left-wing policies on television and consider yourself a feminist. How did you get along with a former leader of the People’s Party?
B.C We are both multifaceted. I met Cristina and I think that on many things we are not that far apart. For example, I believe she is also a feminist woman. The problem is that society is very polarized now. We are an example that we can and must live together.
CF What unites us is the fact that we are two free souls in the way we face life. And, in this type of coexistence, it happens like in a family, you have to look more for what unites you than what separates you. When I was in politics there were people from my party with whom I wouldn’t even go to the bar on the corner and, in any case, I always had friends who were ideologically opposed to me.
Q. The current political tension in the Community of Madrid was not so extreme when Cristina Cifuentes was president.
CF Unfortunately, politics in general, not only in the Community of Madrid, has nothing to do with that of 10 or 15 years ago. I think it’s not the company’s responsibility. It is politics that fuels the conflict.
Q. Now that they are friends, would Cristina advise Alba to return to Ana Rosa’s universe?
CF I won’t comment on that topic. The only advice I gave to Alba, who doesn’t pay any attention to me, but I give it to her with affection as if I were her mother, is that in life there is no reason to say everything that comes to mind.
B.C But I say very little of everything I think! Many other things go through my mind. If I told them all…
CF Of course I would like it not to conflict with Ana Rosa, because I have been working with Ana Rosa for many years and I am very grateful to her. The causes do not have to be common causes. I, Alba, love her. I accept her as she is, as she accepts me, I guess.
B.C I think we are two very intelligent women. We have other flaws, but lack of intelligence is not one of them. There were topics on this trip that we knew would be best left untouched if they created conflict due to us being away from home. For survival and also for affection.
Q. La 1 and La 2 are experiencing a good moment in terms of ratings, but there are those who do not take kindly to the fact that their budget is dedicated to so many programs with celebrities.
CF And they have every right to express it. That said, as a Spaniard and as a taxpayer, I think the fact that a national public television has a large audience is excellent news.
B.C I am very happy with the management that is being done of our public television. There are many other programs, such as The promise, Here the Earth and all the La2 programming that says this is not entirely true.
Q. Indeed, right-wing parties criticize the fact that there are too many programs dedicated to political debate on TVE.
CF The fact is that, although it may seem like a contradiction, I rarely watch television. And even less so after two months of being away and not being able to see anything because we had no phone.
B.C I had time to look on social networks and saw a video of José Pablo López (president of RTVE) in which he took a photo of the political table of one of the programs. There is absolute diversity and the possibility to speak.
Q. And have you had time to find out about the accusation made by Ana Rosa’s program that the Government manipulates audiometers?
CF I can only say what I have been saying for some time: that this is a completely obsolete system. Today television is watched through the Internet and on platforms. There is no way to calculate it. For example, when I watch television, I never watch it live, I always watch it later so I can remove the commercials.
B.C I know Cristina told me not to enter the gardens, but I will. The fact that audiometers need to be modernized does not mean that on television we can say that they are manipulated. And less when we are interested. When things are going well for us, when the public favors us, we don’t say anything. In the end they are official data and you have to accept them, because this is the game of communication.
Q. Going back to the things that unite you, what was the hardest part to participate in? Until the end of the world?
CF There were very tough physical demands. We need to get used to living in a very different way from how we live, to sleeping in scary places, without the minimum conditions, no longer hygienic, but sanitary. Sleeping in beds with moving fluids. Spending 12 hours on a bus full of cockroaches…
B.C And there were times when we saw a lot of poverty, suffered by children and animals on the streets. These are things that leave us touched for several days.
CF It was more than just poverty. It was poverty. And we were struck by those tremendous contrasts that we saw. In Panama we were struck by seeing those modern towers and, at their feet, the shacks. The middle class practically does not exist.
B.C That’s why I understand that people are looking for a better situation in other countries. It’s normal.
Q. The original BBC format travels around the world. In your case, was it an advantage to travel across a continent with which you share a language?
B.C Yes, it was. Not only to make ourselves understood, but also to learn from other cultures, something we would have lacked a lot of information about on another continent.
CF This trip allows you to really get to know how people live in the countries we visited, beyond what is shown during tourist visits, which only take certain routes.
