The appointment is at dusk in the studio from where it is broadcast live. The intervalwith the estimated times: first the interview and then the photos, so as not to distort the timetable. But José Miguel Monzón arrives, aboard the van that brings him from home every day, and, since the photographer prefers to photograph him with the natural light that is already setting, he begins to pretend to be in Wyoming in front of the camera and upsets the plans. After having responded, in a torrential manner, to the interview in which, who knows for what reason, a representative of Atresmedia participates as a “listener” and of which what follows is only a fifth of what he said with that mouth, Monzón puts on make-up and returns made-up and dressed in the “rich” shirt and suspenders with which he presents the program. He seems angry with the general situation and happy with his own situation in particular. On the 26th he received the Ondas Lifetime Achievement Award in Barcelona and, although he had already recovered, he welcomed the news with an emotion that ran through the radio when Carles Francino told it to him live on the SER channel.
His voice broke.
Because it took me by surprise and I lost the character I have for these things. Normally I do an exercise in cynicism, but for the first time in my life I said what I really thought: that I want to think that all my classmates The interval They love me very much and I just want to collect the award to dedicate to them for the love they have for me. To make matters worse, when I arrived on set, these bastards had thrown me a surprise party.
And the tears returned.
A little, because it was already filming, but I said to myself: wait, you’ll end up like Fraga, crying over everything, because Fraga shot people, but then cried over any trifle.
To what extent has this cynicism served as a shield for you?
My whole life. My Greater Wyoming persona has served me well in everything, including flirting, because I’m a normal, shy person, but because I spend so much time with others, I’ve been comprehensively checked for schizophrenia. If Wyoming speaks, I let the rally go, pa, pa, pa and it comes out on its own, smooth. But if I speak for myself I get very angry, I get very angry and I say many atrocities, I am very visceral.
Do you ever count to 10?
What are you saying? Not even zero, and with a beer I’m already going to negative numbers. If they had taken my records from UCO, I would have been out of Spain a long time ago.
Or in the Soto del Real prison, next door.
Well, with any luck, I’d be out, because I’d try to escape. In fact, once a politician called me to propose that I include myself on a list as an independent and I replied that I wouldn’t even get involved. The discipline of voting is not for me. I want to be in the trenches, and the trench must be at least five kilometers from electricity.
In other words, their thing is to be contrary.
Against injustice, always. At my age, with these turbulent times, I would say that everything we are witnessing is the most serious thing I have experienced since Franco. Because what happened with Franco was obvious. You were in a dictatorship and a dictatorship has its parameters. But I have never experienced this audacity: these antics of the Supreme Court and the FGE trial. That sentences cannot be criticized, that judges cannot be talked about, is an absolute novelty. This ruling is political and criticizing it precisely means defending the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary. Democracy and its conquests were achieved in the streets, the emeritus did not bring them, the only thing he brought were the jackets and medals.
What do you think of the memoirs of Juan Carlos I?
Which are depressive and paranoid memories. That King Juan Carlos brought democracy to Spain? Come on, man, if Franco lived another 40 years, there would be another 40 years of dictatorship, and he would continue to live on stupid soup, as he has done all his life.
When you say “at my age,” 70, what do you mean?
Well, look, it’s a time when I saw Fraga on TV loose, without a leash or muzzle. He was terribly aggressive and fascistic. When he died and every newspaper in this country dedicated 25 pages to him, it made me want to wipe my ass, it’s as simple as that. The fact is that these people have not met him: Abascal, next to them, is a filthy little lamb. The truth is that I regret having to make these statements, but since I have little left…
In life or in profession?
Of public life.
He’s been saying he’s leaving for several years. Is it serious?
Well, like my friend Miguel Ríos, who has 82 tacos, the guy. But seriously: in another reincarnation I was a doctor and I will retire before I have a stroke. I will not wait for a person, as Ayuso says, from another country to take me in a wheelchair. Now I have money, I’m healthy and I’m going to give myself a chance. I am an idle character in the extreme. Back when I played with El Reverendo, when we gained a bit of a name and started making money, we reached the incredible level of only doing one concert a month, we were pioneers of short working hours. So now that I have my life figured out, I want to get down to messing around. Playing the guitar, reading: I’m a compulsive reader. What sane people would do if they had the chance.
It will be lined
Well, I’ve been working continuously for 40 years, what do you want me to do? And I pay almost 50% of what I earn in taxes. I have been working on this program for 20 years. The possibility of charging less and keeping the house doesn’t sit well with me. I’ll also tell you that I have never been the highest paid. I met some fools who were already rich after two days. In other words, I’m not the smartest. But I’m fine just the way I am. I’ve never had a rep, if I had, I’d be richer.
In other words, answer everyone’s phone.
Now I can’t take it anymore, because they published my details and, by changing my number, I lost many contacts. I also tell you that now that I no longer have girlfriends, no one will call me at four in the morning. Before they would call me every now and then and I would say: “I’m on my way”.
If I called yourself an “elegant leftist,” what would you answer?
I’m not elegant and never have been. On the contrary, I come from the La Prosperidad neighborhood of Madrid, where elegant people didn’t even enter. But if the president of the Community of Madrid can call the President of the Government in Parliament a “son of a whore” and make a joke, then it gives people the flag to call anyone they consider in their shadow, for example me, a son of a whore.
Have you been called a “son of a bitch” on the street?
He’s shameless and a bastard. I went to pick up my daughter, who works in a hardware store in the Salamanca neighborhood, and they told me everything.
It will be a jewelry store.
That. Look, I’ve been famous my whole life. I have been one for 50 years, I have been a sociological witness and I have never experienced this social aggression. And that comes from those slogans.
Does this concern you personally?
They write it in the newspapers, which is what they do when I give interviews, which is why I only give one a year, well. But when they tell me in person, I’m not snobbish: I get the neighborhood, and I respond. I did it once, while I was with my kids, the argument came to light and I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again because it’s not their fault if some people think I’m a son of a bitch. When they raise their hand, I stay with my hand raised because this isn’t done where I come from. But they want the photo and they won’t get it. I also tell you that hosts don’t hurt. It hurts me much more to go to bed with the image of a group of asshole twenty-year-olds insulting me and me drinking a beer looking at the ground because I’m shitWell no. I’m no hero, but I’m not cut out for that. I’m not elegant, I’m not.
It bothered him to be a classy leftist.
No, zero. But elegant people have disgusted me since I was a child, I can’t stand them. I come back aged. The fact is that I have 70 heels and I’m from another planet. In my neighborhood there was no subway. It was a small town where my mother had a pharmacy, there was a grocery store… We were mixed, it was a heterogeneous world where even the chorizos respected people and snobbish people didn’t exist. They stayed in their neighborhoods.
There would also be hard drugs.
Of course I was never addicted, but you could see the addicts and you could see what their fate was. When AIDS came, you already knew they were going to collapse, and they did. In my neighborhood, many.
He was speaking before the stroke. Do you have health losses?
I have a little sugar, but I’m fine with everything (wink).
Everything, everything?
In my case, yes. Getting older has its positive side. As you age your desires fade away and this gives you a different perspective, a peace of mind. Most of the stupid things I’ve done in my life have been for the same reason and I’ve found myself in circumstances I didn’t want at all. For what has always been, for what makes the world go round. It seems that we have believed in Newton’s laws, and that the planet rotates because of this, because of sex.
How many times have you been called “sir”?
Well, it depends on who’s looking at me. There are super strict people. I mean, my daughter gives me a hard time… I’ve been progressive since I was a kid. And I won’t tell you this anymore from the Faculty. I didn’t know that resistance, that organization against Francoism existed. So, the women who surrounded me my whole life did not allow me to be sexist. But my daughter’s thing is a hammer. I also want to have the freedom to vent and express myself in privacy. You have to distinguish intimacy from social life, dammit.
In other words, they call him “sir”.
They correct me, I’m joking. I’ve never understood male supremacy. I was brought up on that shit, but I corrected myself. Like with racism. It’s probably a standard, but hey, dammit, you have a high self-concept you aspire to, and it’s work that needs to be done. If a black person disgusts me, at 16 years old, I now understand that this is shit and it’s called racism, it contradicts my ideology, and I correct it, exactly as a Catholic bishop should tolerate certain endocrine stimuli and not do certain things. I, for example, left the Church so I could masturbate without sinning.
At what age?
I think from the womb. No, I remember the first time. It was in a group, in my grandfather’s town. One night, we went with my cousins and other kids to see a cave of I don’t know what and someone started and I, who had never had a wank, didn’t know what the fuck to do. In fact I didn’t do much, I just pretended to do what everyone else was doing, but then I enjoyed it. And now it’s something I recommend to everyone, especially at this age: masturbation is an excellent practice for the prostate.
Do you talk about it with your friends? Women talk menopause.
Let’s see, we are two planets. There I argue with my friends. We are different planets and there is a 40% intersection. I can’t conceive of a meeting of five guys to talk about this, after five minutes one would say, “Hey, go fuck your prostate.”
So tell me three recurring themes that you address in your summits.
I couldn’t tell you three, but especially the pre-Socratics. Also we do it in Sanskrit, which makes the sentences very difficult and we spend hours on it.
They say women live longer because they talk more
More than me? Let’s go now.
HALF A CENTURY GIVING THE NOTE
José Migual Monzón (Madrid, 70 years old) would become a doctor. He studied and worked briefly until his “absolute lack of ambition and his vocation as an “extreme slacker” led him down other paths. He himself is considered one of the greatest successes of his life when, together with El Reverendo, he managed to be paid well enough as a musician to “only do one concert a month” and dedicate the rest of the time to “fucking around”. He became one of the most loved and hated characters on Spanish television, due to his love of puddles and politics. commitment. He is only silent about the “dream”, he boasts.
