• The Sixth Iñaki López and Cristina Pardo will be the substitutes for Mamen Mendizábal in Better Later

  • End of stage Mamen Mendizabal leaves Más Vale Tarde after 10 years at the helm

Mamen Mendizábal does

not hesitate

to close her stage of

Better Later

: «I have no nostalgia in life, neither in this nor personally, having the possibility of change is fortunate».

But when talking about his nine years in the afternoons of La Sexta, he is filtered: "This week I really realized that this is over."

And its end is the beginning of its two companions: Cristina Pardo and Iñaki López. Two for one, sales season. The couple that emerged from the chimes is now consolidated for the daily afternoon. "When we make the grapes we do not prepare anything for the despair of the scriptwriters, people are afraid of emptiness, but when you come from the Ferreras school that does not happen to you," says Cristina Pardo, who knows that with

Better Later

that improvisation will go as far as a point. "There

are two of us, it's the good thing: if one is silent, the other speaks

," Iñaki López comments in an ironic tone, which he does not leave in the whole talk.

The Basque, like Mendizábal, closes a nine-year cycle to return to the daily format that has not been used since his time at EITB back in February 2010: «I am leaving the night hotel business, I am going to serve menus and I am already taking advantage of the end of the Mamen cycle to close mine.

Of course I'm going to miss

La Sexta Noche

, there I met my wife and I was a father

, but we won't have time to miss anything with three hours a day live ».

If there were any doubts, Mendizabal is in charge of solving them: «My family already knows that I live here, that I am never here, that if my father is operated on, I have a program ... It is very hard, but it happens to me as it happens to them, that

we are hooked to have a rundown and jump through the air at the last moment

».

It was this rhythm that, with the arrival of the pandemic, made Mendizábal consider his future in search of "something more simmering, more artisanal." Take the leap from adrenaline to "signature" television. "The pandemic makes you put your priorities in order and

I realized that I needed a change of cycle after these two hard years

," he says a few hours after closing his stage in

Better Later

. "I want to continue in La Sexta, but there is the incentive to start something new when Spain begins its comeback."

The reverse path is the one that their substitutes will follow in search of "getting out of the comfort zone" and "out of the exciting day to day." "Being glued to the present seems to me the best of this program after coming from the analysis, the closest thing to the present that we have lived in nine years was the winner of Eurovision", López begins. "The advantage here is that something happens all the time, you don't have to force anything like a Sunday," agrees Pardo. And, sidelong, Mendizábal laughs like a mother seeing what comes to her children.

"On weekends you are going to have them free, you are very weekends, and there are two of you that always helps," jokes the Madrilenian. "Yes, we are very aware of the weekends," says Iñaki. "

I have missed many things, now I will be able to go to weddings, baptisms and communions

, which since confinement I pay to go to a wedding," completes Cristina Pardo, who for three years has commanded Sunday afternoon with Liarla Pardo. "Now they are short for me because starting a program from scratch is hell, the good thing about this stage is that loyalty to the viewer is already done and it is only to put our personal touch."

It does not seem that the change, at least apparently, poses a problem for those affected.

"This is a very capricious medium, television is very murderous because it sucks your blood until it doesn't need you and it's over, but you always have to try formats", highlights López.

"

As a spectator it stimulates me to see changes and I was already playing

", Mendizábal deepens.

"It is that always doing the same is boring, being able to move is the good thing about journalism," concludes Pardo.

In a few months, it will be seen if they think the same.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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