It had been 33 years since Mercedes Milá had set foot on a set to make a program for public television. In July 1990 the presenter left RTVE – "I still say TVE" – and never returned, until now. I don't know what you're talking about is the program that has made, not only that Mercedes Milá returns to linear television after her four-year journey on Movistar Plus+ with Milá vs Mila, but that she returns to the public channel. "The culprit is J.P.," he says, "because that's what I call him." J. P. is none other than José Pablo López, the director of General Content at RTVE, who made the journalist fall in love with him, fascinated her to such an extent that when Movistar Plus+ said no to his new project, the Milá did not think of anyone else but him and his TVE.

"I want to wake up after a show and say I'm where I need to be," the presenter told this newspaper hours before the premiere of I Don't Know What You Talk About. Some time ago, Mercedes Milá said that she would like to return to TVE to finish where she started and, therefore, when you ask her if this program will be her last, her farewell, her retirement responds forcefully: "No, I have not said that I want to end because I have no idea what is going to happen to me, or if I am going to finish, Not even if next year they call me from somewhere else. I just know I'm happy because I'm home."

I Don't Know What You Talk About, produced by RTVE in collaboration with Zanskar Producciones, premiered by surprise on the day of the MasterChef Celebrity final. The audience data wasn't spectacular, but right now there isn't any program that does spectacular data. However, viewers applauded not only Mercedes Milá's return to linear television but also the quality of a program whose objective is to unite two generations separated not only by years but by many other things.

That's it. Three weeks after that first try, I Don't Know What You're Talking About has its fixed day and place, for the time being. Mercedes Milá doesn't get involved there. It will be the only thing.

The extensive archive with Mercedes Milá's historical interviews on public television is the common thread of the program and its objective is twofold: to explain to young people what the past of our country was like and to understand what the present is like through interviews and spontaneous conversations with them.

I don't know what you're talking about, it's a phrase that is repeated throughout the program because what is intended is for one of the parties to explain to the other what it refers to. And that's why one of the parties is Inés Hernand and the other is Mercedes Milá. "There's one thing that I find very funny about the slang of young people," says Milá, and "it's that 'in the ass,' which I thought was a bad thing because before it meant that you got hit in the ass, now it turns out that it's a good thing." An example of what the program is and the attempt to connect very different generations, but very necessary for each other.

You're back on linear TV, on La 1, with an audience... What does your heart tell you? It's very difficult for me to say something that I haven't said before because I've done so many presentations that it's really complicated. But I can say that I am calm. I'm going to be taught a lot of lessons here. Starting with Inés and ending with many people in the audience. What I aspire and wish is for people to have enough fun that the following week they will say: 'Come on, the Mila is there again'. I've learned that it's really to work without a table in front of me because I always had a script at that table, but now I don't have anything at all. I'm going bareback.

The seed of I Don't Know What You Talk About came from a conversation between Mercedes Milá and her niece Marina, who also participates in the program. In that conversation, the presenter named Lola Flores and her niece asked her who Lola Flores was. "I said, 'How come you don't know who Lola Flores is?' He is a very important person in Spain. I sent it to Google to look it up."

There is a moment when you throw in the towel until a young man tells you that he doesn't know who Lola Flores is

That's when Mercedes Milá realized what young people had to learn from the past and what older people had to learn from now. So she told María Ruiz, her boss at Zanskar productions, they proposed it to Movistar Plus+, they told them first yes, then no, in between the lunch with J.P. and then the proposal to the man who has made her return to public television.

What do you think is the barrier that exists between generations so that the exchange between one and the other does not take place? Well, there's no time for everything. I have asked and I have been told that in schools the Civil War ends. There is nothing about the Transition, despite how important it was, and even more so in these moments in which everyone is taking ownership of the Transition as they please. In the houses there used to be conversation and there is a moment when you throw in the towel until a young man tells you that he doesn't know who Lola Flores is. I think it's a shame. You face the audience again... I'm going to live it like an ass, very bad because I come from Movistar Plus+ where I've been four years in peace, doing what we wanted to do at every moment without looking at whether they were going to see that or not. The audience of a generalist television has nothing to do with this because we depend on the whim of the people who put what they want, and I respect that a lot. For me, the remote control is sacred and it seems to me to be the result of our work. Do you think this program will change that dynamic? Let's see. What I can tell you is that if a television executive throws in the towel, let them take him away. The key is to know how we manage to attract that generation that doesn't know who Lola Flores is. I don't know how to answer you. We try to attract them out of curiosity, to know that they are listened to. And then let what God wants happen.

I come from a dictatorship where we were censored even to the point of eyelashes

By her side is, let's say, a Mercedes Milá of the 21st century: Inés Hernand. Neither were known before the show, but the two fit together like "a Rubik's cube." They throw compliments at each other non-stop. They are delighted. "He was much less brilliant than her," Milá says. "Apart from the fact that I come from a dictatorship where we were censored to the point of eyelashes," he says.

There are people who say now that they don't do the television of that time or the questions of then. Do you think you couldn't do, for example, the interview you did with the director of RTVE years ago? Try. When I try it, I'll say. What there is is one thing that makes me very angry, and that is that they don't let us do politics. They wouldn't let me on Movistar Plus+ either. Why don't they let you? The reason is very clear: the political groups measure television appearances in such a way that if you interview I don't know who one week, a week you have to interview the person on the other side. So, it's a decision of the network that you don't play politics. Yes. They have told us to forget about politics. But hey, now the question is to make programs that we come out satisfied with and I have been satisfied every day. Mediaset? Yes, Jaime Guerra – director of Mediaset's Content Production division – who I had already worked with at GH called me to tell me that we had to talk, that they wanted to do something with me. But that's not the same as being told 'let's move on'. You, who have always said what comes out of your mind, what do you think of those who say that there is censorship and that nothing can be talked about? Alfonso Guerra... If they gave me permission, which I don't think they will, I would do an interview with him that would roll him on the floor. Listening to and seeing Alfonso Guerra today makes me ashamed and, besides, I think it hurts us all.

  • RTVE