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40 years at RFI: Alejandro Valente entrusts his memories
Audio 15:57
Alejandro Valente © Alexandra Cagnard/ RFI
By: Alexandra Cagnard Follow
3 mins
If you are a regular RFI listener, and a football fan, the name and voice of Alejandro Valente are familiar to you.
If that doesn't mean anything to you, this episode invites you to hear it.
A journalist, he joined RFI in 1982. He is retiring after four decades behind the microphone.
In this episode, he wanted to indulge a little and tell some memories.
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In this episode of
Witnesses d'actu
,
Alejandro Valente
returns in particular to the kidnapping, by the FARC guerrillas, of the Franco-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt in 2002. She had spent 6 years in the jungle before being
released
.
Close to the family of the Franco-Colombian, Alejandro had learned that during her captivity, she had the possibility of listening to RFI.
Armed with this information, this is how RFI decided to broadcast messages intended for him, in particular
messages from his children
: "
We thought of Melanie and Lorenzo, who hadn't had any contact with her for years when they were teenagers.
When we started sending messages, we decided that the recordings would be public to interest other media in the fate of Ingrid Betancourt.
In fact, there was a crazy world and it was difficult to put all the journalists and all the cameras in our studios
”.
This will mark the start
of on-air support
for French hostages around the world.
Summing up forty years of current affairs is not easy, Alejandro evokes the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Gulf War, ten years earlier, or even the death of Lady Diana in 1997, but his real passion is the soccer.
In this episode, he notably evokes the presentation to
Lionel Messi of his first Ballon d'Or in 2009
: “
I went to his house, to Barcelona.
He was a very nice kid, very shy and who seemed a little overwhelmed by the emotion he felt.
Outside of football, he had little experience.
I made him discover Paris with his family.
And I see with pleasure that with age, he has grown, that he is more cultured, that he likes to go to the theater and do something other than play football
.
Alejandro Valente was also close to Argentinian footballer
Diego Maradona, who died on November 25, 2020
: “
He is a very different character from Lionel Messi.
He is someone I have often accompanied.
We've had some pretty amazing times.
With him, we had the impression of seeing the world differently, so everything around him was excessive and passionate
.
This retirement after 40 years of career at RFI, Alejandro says he prepared it.
He will now devote himself to writing.
“
The idea is not to start a literary career, but to leave a trace of certain facts that I have experienced.
In particular, I have already written a long story for my son to tell him why I left Argentina in 1976. This book is a great experience and I will continue on this path for a while
”.
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Alejandro Valente
On the same subject
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[Part 2] - Alejandro Valente's farewell to the listeners
News calls
[Part 1] - Alejandro Valente's farewell to listeners