- Boticaria García. "York ham doesn't exist and superfoods don't either"
While typing a last mail at full speed , review aloud what you have to do before catching the train. In a few hours, he will be in Cuenca, before his countrymen, to whom he will talk about health and nutrition. He has to hurry up and doesn't want to forget anything, so he leaves a bag with two "essentials" next to the door: his ukulele and rubber gloves that simulate the claws of a crab .
On the ticket he says his name is Marián, but, really, the one who waits in Cuenca is Boticaria García, his alter ego and the person who is revolutionizing health dissemination in Spain. With her particular style, which combines rigor, simplicity and humor, this doctor in Pharmacy who has also graduated in Nutrition and Optics is getting a challenge: that the health councils reach the general public.
He has 142,000 followers on Instagram, almost 38,000 on Twitter and a blog with more than two million monthly visits. But his life has not always been so 2.0. In fact, much of his 37 years are linked to a rural pharmacy where there was no broadband and social networks were woven only over the counter.
«My parents are pharmacists and in the 80s they bought the pharmacy in Belmonte, in Cuenca. I grew up in that bounce, where there was a gathering and where the priest, the doctor or the town veterinarian passed. There they took my diaper off, I celebrated my birthdays, and learned to read, ”he recalls.
From aspirin A to zaldiar Z, of course.
Marián was called to follow the family saga and he did so for 12 years in which he learned "the importance of communicating, of connecting with a patient who sometimes only has you as a reference."
He spent the first seven winters of his career in the small pharmacy of Villaescusa de Haro, a town near Belmonte, from where he jumped, in 2013, to an apothecary in the Madrid town of Mejorada del Campo. And there it would still be, he assures, if Dr. Google had not crossed his path.
«From the beginning I saw that a lot of people arrived with hoaxes or errors that they had seen on the Internet. And there I began to think that if I couldn't fight the network I would have to join it, ”he says.
His first blog My gremlin does not eat me , he was born in 2011, during the pregnancy of his daughter Carmen and in full tribulations for the upbringing of his eldest son, Carlos (today 8 years).
But, immediately, encouraged by her mother and her husband, Javier, she felt that her space could be broader and started boticariagarcia.com, a website to solve frequent health and nutrition questions through a simple, direct and enjoyable language . «When I was looking for something I found either pages aimed at specialists and full of technicalities or barbarities in forums. And I thought that I could give rigorous information in an understandable way, ”says the pharmacist who, not even in the remotest part of his head, expected a change in life like the one he has lived.
He knew that he wanted a close name that would give confidence to those who visited "that half serious blog of the mother gremlin ." And Boticaria García left almost without thinking.
The advice of her friend Natalia de Santiago helped her with a good web positioning and, from there, the success was unstoppable. Media collaborations, awards, books began ... This week, his latest work The ham of York does not exist: The guide to buy healthy and discover the secrets of the supermarket (The Sphere of Books) has just launched its sixth edition, with more than 23,000 copies sold.
Laura Baena , founder of the also viral Malasmadres Club met Marián García at the beginning of the decade, when both made their first steps as bloggers. He has lived with her the whole process, from the first post "in which writing was little more than a personal relief", until the current day, in which it is normal to be called Boti down the street.
«For me, one of its great qualities is that it makes the difficult easy. Get to connect with people through humor, laugh and simple language. And that makes the messages arrive and the concepts are better learned, ”he says.
Ibuprofen is Batman
A paradigmatic example of that apothecary style is found by anyone who types this recurring question on Google: "For pain, paracetamol or ibuprofen?"
Garcia's response, one of the most visited content of his blog, appears among the first results. And it leaves no one indifferent, because it draws on an easy-to-understand analogy - ibuprofen is Batman and paracetamol, Robin - and, after a full explanation, brings an even easier conclusion to remember: "If we can get by with Robin, let's leave calm down Batman » .
In addition to the originality in the texts of his blog, Boticaria García also often uses - especially in his networks and television appearances - other tools, such as rhymes, songs and different performances that surprise the viewer and help to fix his message.
The crab claws that he has left next to the door of his house so that he is not forgotten on his trip to Cuenca are, in fact, an example of this strategy that he uses to capture the attention of the public.
I have a personal crusade against surimi, because it is associated with healthy properties even though it doesn't have them
"I have a personal crusade against surimi, which is associated with healthy properties even though it doesn't have them," he explains. Actually, what we often call crab sticks is nothing more than a nonspecific fish gel watered with starch, salt, sugar, glutamate and various dyes. " A completely dispensable product , which does not contribute anything, and which, however, the industry has managed to disguise very well for sale," he says. "Dismantling that costume is complicated, so if I have to wear crab claws and do my particular version of Let it be , then I do it."
From her experience as a communicator, the pharmaceutical company defends the need to be «disruptive» in this global world where information imputs are constant, «and flat messages do not arrive».
Therefore, Boticaria García does not say "eat fruits and vegetables", but "Eat Portugal" (with "a lot of green and a lot of red", like the country's flag). Nor does it speak of insane products, but of "zorromostros". And it is customary not to leave hair on the tongue: «As much as you look for them in the supermarket, you will not find a healthy industrial cookie. Not even one. Because there are not. Just as there are not all those superfoods that promise to improve your health in a simple way ».
The fight against these bulls that reach the consumer was, in fact, the first war he fought in the networks. But, now, however, it is overturned in a new way of reaching the citizen. «At first, I thought that the best thing I could do in dissemination was to dismantle myths . Instead, today I think the most effective thing is to get people to incorporate you into their networks. Just as they follow actresses or singers, they also want to have your impacts. Because that will make them consult you, doubt when reading certain messages », he reflects. And he adds: «My objective is to try to inoculate the virus of skepticism in the population» .
Since 2018, Marián García has not worked in any pharmacy office and is dedicated exclusively to the dissemination and her work as a professor of the degree of Nutrition and Dietetics of the IsabelI University.
She says that betting on “the attached ones”, the term she uses to name her followers, was not a simple decision, but in reality, this change of life closes a circle that she herself had left open in her youth.
Teen Marián liked the pharmacy very much, but also to write. A phrase from his father - "you can be a pharmacist and then write in your spare time, but you cannot be a writer and then a pharmacist in your spare time" - made him choose a path. However, he never buried his passion for letters .
In the living room of his house, well visible, next to the works of bloggers such as Fatima Casaseca or Eva Quevedo, who served as inspiration when he began his adventure in the dissemination, there is also a copy of The Dart in the Word , by Lázaro Carreter .
Garcia asked his parents in the mid-90s. And, since then, he has always carried it with him, as a reminder of everything he had to tell.
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