From time to time, and unfortunately too often, life gives us a whiplash.
Today could have been another day, but it ended badly.
Madrid, this city that none of us asked where we were from,
has lost a bit of its history
and has lost one of its best historians.
The chroniclers of the town met on Wednesday, February 16, to have lunch with Mayor Almeida in a traditional meeting that our Angel, the Dean, could not miss.
He came and left before.
His arm hurt, which he put down to him having been splitting firewood the day before.
A heart attack has robbed us of our friend.
Ángel practically died presenting his latest book
Errors in the history of Madrid.
Topics, myths, hoaxes and lies
, which he presented last Saturday at COPE, which was his home for many years.
Every day from his microphone
he launched a letter to the mayor of the city
without caring who was in power.
She poked and gave well.
I met him at the newspaper
Ya
, by Mateo Inurria, where he started working in 1969 and from where he jumped to the radio in one of the few cases of a
pen
that successfully went on the airwaves to practice his profession.
And in COPE he was the conscience of the city in which he did not forget anyone and gave shelter to everyone.
When we started the adventure/barricade of EL MUNDO, we turned Ángel into the
critical reflection of the city.
And he herded mercilessly when the ruler deserved it, which was many times.
But also when the trade unionist turned the city upside down and we were left without public transport for a few tenths in a collective agreement.
You called him to write about a topic and
you didn't have to explain anything to him because he knew everything about this city and its community.
He was not only fast with the typewriter (in the early days he sent the texts by fax) but he was right with what we wanted without giving him any guidelines.
The reason is that our colleague applied common sense to journalism and
forgot such boring political approaches at times.
Over time, his column was modernized and we
turned it into a page called
El alley of the cat
.
The happy cat had a complex layout, but he, who had also been a paper man, nailed it.
Same technique: common sense and handing out bast to the fool or the clever one on duty.
When one, who is not from this city, but who wants it as his own, had a doubt about its history, he called Ángel.
It was easy to find him at COPE or at his house in Getafe
, but in the days without cell phones you could go to one of his almost 40 books on this hard, but so beautiful Madrid, where you would surely find answers.
In addition to writing dozens of columns and cats, he collaborated with
Telemadrid, Madrid Diario, La Razón
and in any media that spoke of this city or its region.
A magnificent journalist has gone with a whiplash.
The worst thing is that a good colleague has left us and something that is very difficult in this profession: a boss loved by his people.
Ángel, Sara, and many others can attest to it.
Rivals also mourn him today.
He was a chronicler for the Villa, which Ángel envied, and he received prizes and gave out proclamations wherever he was asked.
He has left suddenly, without warning.
He left COPE some time ago and
devoted himself to giving back to his wife, in the Mediterranean, a little of the time he stole from her when they were younger.
A bit of Madrid's history is gone.
I have said that on Wednesday afternoon his rivals cried for him.
I was wrong because I had no rivals.
Neither among politicians nor among the competition did Ángel del Río have enemies.
He passed through this Madrid of our lives making only friends.
He rests with god friend.
Ángel del Río
was a columnist for El Mundo for more than 20 years.
He died today Wednesday of a heart attack at the age of 71.
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