There are television figures who generate consensus. Consensus for good, it is understood. An entire generation grew up fascinated by the skill of a certain Jordi Cruz for crafts. He broadens the spectrum to "generation and a half." Those children back then have children today, and that religion of scissors and glue at the turn of the century is still transmitted, "like Star Wars fans."

The Jordi Cruz who looks out the Zoom window looks half gray hair and beard shadow of a couple of days. The years go by for everyone, even for that kid from Barcelona who premiered at Club Disney at 19, touched the sky with Art Attack at 21 and retired from generalist national television with Megatrix at 32. That was 15 years ago. Maybe that's why his return generates expectation. Perhaps, too, because the small screen to which he returns with his new reality adventure Yolo Race, is not exactly the same as the one he left. Now it fits in the palm of your hand.

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Art Attack generated a great impact and transcended the simple children's program, it became an element of union for the family and continues to be, "recognizes Cruz, "people continue to send me messages and I love that they continue to accompany me today, that that magical bond that was created is maintained I still do not understand well how. " Although Art Attack abandoned Jordi Cruz in 2004, he has never abandoned him. He continues to define himself, above all, as "artimaniac", and has continued with crafts through his social networks.

"I've always been a little bit weird as a communicator," he confesses, "and I've never seen myself in that closed and corseted panorama in which if you don't go on television you're not communicating." His thing, he says, are the new formats: "If I had been born at the time when YouTube grew up I would have been a youtuber, I'm convinced." Halfway between television and social content is Yolo Race, acronym in English of You Only Live Once, only lives once, and that combines the best of a reality adventure with the interactivity of TikTok.

Six influencers, a week in the Yucatan Peninsula, countless physical, orientation, gastronomic tests, all packaged in five chapters shot vertically and divided into three (the times of TikTok oblige) that can adopt up to seven points of view: those of each of the contestants and that of the presenter . None of them have any idea what will happen tomorrow. Something like the modern version of "choose your own adventure". "I throw myself into the pool headlong into these super novel things," says Cruz, to whom the idea came tailored by email, so much as he was already questioned as a member of the team: "I thought they had made a mistake, but no," he recalls.

The protagonists of this first season are the magician Inmagic, (12.8 million followers), Jonata (7.9 million), Sergio Jurado (7.1 million), Tania, alias Thanix (4.2 million), the parkour professional Jose Tengiz (3.5 million) and the Paralympic athlete Marta Casado (Two million), and her fame crosses borders... and oceans. One day they were recording in a small town and ended up in a kind of temple: "I had just finished school and people began to arrive, and people, and people, even came by motorcycle because they knew them," recalls the presenter, and clarifies, laughing: "Not to me, on the other hand." He admits that he liked that role "roll Beijing Express, like Raquel Sánchez Silva imposing authority".

For the result to be completely immersive, the shooting is almost as important as the broadcast. A classic television team joins the six mobiles of content creators, who each tell their personal experience to the camera, without script or filters. The last day was such the amount of material that the team spent the night blank downloading hours and hours of images. "So if you're a follower of one of the content creators, you can see the chapter, but also how he has lived it," Cruz explains.

The videos move at a frenetic pace, constantly appeal to the conversation with the viewer and are truffled with viral memes. Not surprisingly, the producer behind the program is the video platform for gamers Gamestry. "They have been able to read very well the language of the platform, the synergy between videos, the naturalness in the consumption of content on TikTok," acknowledges the presenter. He himself has had to ask for help to learn how to publish his content in the first person. "I'm learning, but the first day my face was a poem."

The only thing that has frustrated Jordi Cruz of his particular television return has been spending a week in Cancun and stepping on the beach just 15 minutes. Perhaps it compensated him by not participating in the gastronomic test with insects on the menu: "I saw the dishes and thought: don't touch this, please. And it touched them, it touched them," he recalls with a gesture of disgust. For next season, which is already on the table, Jordi Cruz prefers a colder place: "Iceland? I'm taking the week after the holidays!"

And wouldn't you go back to television?

-I would return if they call me but it is not that I have left them my phone number, the truth.

Jordi Cruz's thing is the crafts, it is seen. Even to reinvent the small screen.

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