After 25 years being the face of Antena 3, María Rey signed for Telemadrid.

Its current affairs magazine '120 minutes' remains successful in the morning slot, despite the enormous competition.

1,000 '120 minute' programs.

What balance do you make? Everything that could go well did.

We started in June, which is when the programs are tested, without much faith.

In the end, we have turned it into a program that I trust will be consolidated as Madrid Directo and form part of the network's structure. After 40, women have a hard time presenting a program.

But there you are, Ana Rosa, Susanna Griso... is something changing? Above all, the 40s of women have changed.

But there is something that has not changed.

If we reach 55, they will reach 75. Is it still difficult for women to reach a quota of power in the media? The proof is in the newsrooms.

We are mostly women at the tables and the exception in the offices.

Logic says that we have been the majority in newsrooms for so many years that most of the directors should be women.

And it is not like that.

It is obvious that we have not achieved balance in society or in the media. Have you suffered from machismo in the profession? Now, no, but, at first, a lot, when you were not even aware that it was machismo.

At first, it happened that a cameraman jumped on you in a coverage of a trip and you had difficulties to get out from under unscathed.

You didn't think you had to file a complaint.

Now yes.

You assumed that you were very young, blonde and cute, that you had put the uncle and they were risks of the trade.

Having a boss touch your leg was uncomfortable, but you thought: "Let's see if next time, I'll feel further away".

Now I would not consent to it.How was he?In the middle of the Sahara desert.

That the boss touched my leg and even tried to climb up my leg has happened to me on Spanish Television.

That the boss who taught you in the practices jumped on you in the car the last day passed.

That happened every day.

Or that you went to a coverage and a man you were interviewing thought that since you had been nice and friendly you wanted something with him.

And you find yourself in an awkward situation saying: "Excuse me, excuse me, but...".

And the man insisting and insisting with calls.

Or even that they call you from a contact agency. How? Someone wanted to meet and have dinner with the presenter who was on TV.

They assumed that if they offered you money, you would accept it.

It's unheard of. Did it really happen to you? Yes, while on Antena 3. Someone told me that there was a very important businessman who wanted to have dinner with me.

They explained to me that for what they were going to pay me, I was only obliged to have dinner and that the rest was my decision.

And she was a woman.

Sorry?

Could someone be calling me about this?

And she told me that no one forced me and I earned a lot of money.

But, What are you telling me?

This was normal.

Now, it is not.

Now it happens to you and the next day you publish the report.

You'll see how it takes away the desire. You're leaving me amazed.

30 years ago it happened with some frequency.

I never reported anything.

I never went to tell anything to a superior or to a union.

When the guy who touched my leg was really uncomfortable for me, he tried to sit opposite me and never again coincide next to him.

I was in my early twenties, just starting out, and I thought that was part of the risk of working.

And now I think about it and say no.

No one put their hand between their legs. You left Antena 3 because neither the network had any interest in you nor you in it. Well, not exactly like that.

Personally, I saw that a stage was coming to an end and when I explained it to my bosses, they understood me.

After 20 years in Parliament, returning to Parliament made little sense.

He had done the newscast and we hadn't gotten what we wanted.

Then, it was done in another way and they did very well.

In the approach that they made to me, I did not see myself and, when I did not see myself, we were going to get into a debate that was not going to take us anywhere.

I was in the age bracket of 50 when you rethink a lot of things.

Did you want to change your activity? I had once been tempted to switch to corporate communication.

When I already said that I was not comfortable and I wanted to leave, they put out the red carpet for me and helped me.

I didn't want to run the risk of someone saying, "Where do we put Maria? On the shelf with the old furniture?"

I wanted to go to the top.

I left to set up a company, but they made me a very attractive offer in corporate communication and I was about to say yes, when José Pablo called me and told me to go through Telemadrid. And how did you decide? my husband, what do I do?

He wasn't going to go back to TV, but he had the feeling that it was a train that would either catch him or it wouldn't happen anymore.

I was already leaving and I thought it was going to last a short time. You just have to think that it is going to last a short time for you to waste years. Then you can't say no.

I have the perception that the most beautiful thing that I could experience in journalism I have already experienced.

Now are other times for other people.

Those of us of a certain age have a hard time adapting to certain things and assuming that journalism is more ethereal, less paid and more precarious.

Going backwards is always very difficult. How many times have you been censored? Much less than people would like.

It is true that sometimes I have made a proposal or I have given an approach that they have not bought.

I wouldn't understand it as censorship.

The journalist does not have the absolute truth either.

Perhaps the boss introduces other elements in which there is some editorial line that you do not share.

But without the editorial line, the businessman would not continue putting money in that medium.

In the end, you have to find a balance.

The nuances have to do with approaches.

That feeling of censorship type "that is not counted" I have not experienced either.

Have you received slogans on Telemadrid or Antena 3? What do we call slogans?

Who does not receive instructions from their bosses?

How are politicians not going to put pressure on the media?

The politician wants you to say the things they want you to say.

There are calls.

Not to me directly, but the feeling that people have that this is like a terror policy that you do the rundown and someone calls to say what is not counted does not happen.

Neither now nor before.

That you constantly have debates about one approach or the other?

Yes. That sometimes you eat them and other times someone else eats them?

Yes. That this is a world where phones are constantly being picked up and coerced?

No. Vox wants to close Telemadrid.

What would you tell them? This chain is not a superfluous expense, but rather a public service.

It is useful because we maintain a commitment to certain topics, which are not profitable and that the private networks would leave and disappear.

For less than one euro per taxpayer, they can't sell me that this is expensive television. Can Ayuso be criticized on the new Telemadrid? It's done every day.

Everyone who comes can criticize whoever they want with respect.

You can say the government is bad at it, but say the government is shit, do it somewhere else.

Here no. '120 minutes' has survived the changes in the leadership of Telemadrid.

How did you live them? With the same restlessness and discomfort as the rest.

We didn't know if we would also fall.

I would have liked the departure of José Pablo [former director of Telemadrid] to have been different.

He strikes me as a very bright guy.

Now it also hurts me that they turn this into a battle in which some are the good guys and others are the bad guys.

You have to respect everyone.

The first day I met José Antonio Sánchez he told me: "We like your work and you are going to continue doing it."

In the same way that I recognize José Pablo's ability, I recognize José Antonio's show of confidence from minute one.

Why do I have to choose?

That I would have liked things to be done differently?

When I'm boss, I'll do it differently. What do you need to be boss? Probably a lifetime.

It was never my ambition to be the boss of anything because what I like is telling things.

I also think that there is a certain moment in life when you have to take on other responsibilities and that's it.

Nor can you be running from them all your life.

Ayuso carried out an express reform of the law to dismiss the general director of the chain and appoint an administrator.

Is that interventionism? I don't know if I would give it an adjective.

On his day, a law was made with the best of goals, which was to ensure that the decision was made with a broad group of parliamentary representatives and that it was a good formula.

I would have liked the law not to have been changed like this, but rather to have done it the other way.

I would also have liked an agreement to have been reached.

We start from the same: we must always go to confrontation.

I don't work like that. Is it hard to maintain objectivity on the air now that the situation is so tense? It's hard to maintain balance because, in general, we are very unbalanced and demanding the same from others.

Everything we do is in the key of:

either you belong to one or you belong to the other.

You may be in a position where you think that everyone is somewhat right all the time.

Nobody has the absolute truth.

Tell me the manual of the good talk show host He is a person who prepares the topics he has to talk about, analyzes them and studies them to arrive loaded with arguments.

They are here to represent the opinion of what people think.

When the public puts on the chain, they look for someone to confirm what they think with arguments.

Not that they take away the reason.

The debate in the gathering reflects the debate in the street and provides those elements so that when you sit down with your brother-in-law you have a way of defeating him, which is deep down what we all want. It's difficult!

Brother-in-law always knows everything. Here are some true masters at beating brother-in-law. Is political debate looking more and more like '

Sálvame'? It has many elements of 'Sálvame', which was a very innovative program.

It provided a way to make television very cheap and very close to the street.

What happens is that you have to put a limit and an end to frivolity. What is the biggest flaw in politicians today? The disconnection.

Journalism and politics are two mirror activities and, in the end, when one rushes into the abyss, the other runs to arrive at the same time.

Politicians seek media coverage.

And how do they get it?

Making noise.

The media looks for the audience and picks up the noise.

We have gotten into a very dangerous dynamic for everyone.

I defend political activity that is very ungrateful, very harsh and very unfair.

But not everyone is up to the task.

I am seeing a frivolization of the politician's task that worries me.

Why? In the end, it consists of thinking that your only task is to place a sentence on a newscast.

The great debates in Congress went unnoticed.

I always remember seeing how a road safety commission discussed the reasons for establishing mandatory baby seats by law.

That didn't exist.

Someone came in with a report from Holland where they had reduced the number of child deaths by 70% since they had the chairs.

That was a few lines in a newscast.

That way of doing politics was the contribution that CiU made, for example, which was very aware of road safety issues.

Where are those politicians now doing those reflections? That,

Where are they? What are we talking about when we talk about Catalan politicians?

Of the things that worry people?

Or of an ethereal reality that only feeds egos?

You were a parliamentary journalist for 20 years.

What was the politician that most impressed you in short distances? We all remember Rubalcaba very well.

But there were many Rubalcabas, well I don't know if that would be fair.

There were many people who made great contributions.

And I will always vindicate CiU politicians like Carles Campuzano, Xavier Trias... Deputies and spokespersons who had a much more constructive way of doing politics.

It was a very enriching group for national politics and, suddenly, I don't know why they decided that they no longer wanted to be present.

They were very important.

The big hole has been losing the great contribution of nationalism moderated by independence.

Rato also left very funny moments.

But if I had to stay with someone, it would be with the serenity, wisdom and elegance of Ramón Jáuregui. Did you become friends with a politician? I consider myself a friend of several and of all colors.

It is impossible not to become a friend when you have such a close coexistence in a place like Congress.

I lived 20 years of my life from morning to night in Congress.

In the end, there are personal relationships.

I don't think it's bad.

I never stopped telling anything because I liked a spokesperson better or worse.

Years later there have been very valuable people that I wanted to keep and I keep them. And your moment of greatest tension with one of them? In Congress I never had a moment of a tense situation.

Perhaps because I lived through a time when there was more respect between politicians and journalists.

I, although a man who was in the press room fell like a firecracker, I never forgot that I was there as a journalist and that they had voted for that man.

At the moment in which we lose the perspective that this man, even if he is from Vox, Bildu, Podemos or whatever you want, they have chosen him and not you, we are going badly. What are the evils of current journalism? Before there was a limited number of media outlets and networks, but now we are a media forest where we all compete for a small space where anything goes.

We are not finding the formula to retain people with a quality product.

Because to survive the economic crisis we have thrown ourselves into the noise mountain and I miss listening.

In these times in which journalism is so reviled, why is it necessary? He is reviled for what he told you about his mirror work with politics.

To the extent that they discredit themselves, so do we.

Journalism is necessary because what was a rumor or a hoax has become a very dangerous tool for the destruction of society.

In this age of social networks, the media is the alternative and the best social network.

I can't make up a film because I have a structure around me.

If I make up a movie, a colleague will report it and a boss will stop me.

We have some controls that neither Twitter nor WhatsApp have, where there is no type of control.

What journalism lesson can't you stand being given on social networks?

I saw on your Twitter account that you wrote: "I don't open this window anymore because the noise doesn't let me hear the voices." When I started to be active on Twitter, I found it to be a wonderful tool for discussion.

But not anymore.

Now it's just to offend.

Every time I go in, there is so much noise and so many insults... Everyone thinks that because you are on TV they can criticize what you say without thinking that there is a person who reads it at the end of the program, maybe very exhausted and makes you feel bad.

It doesn't occur to me to insult a gas station attendant or a greengrocer.

You walk into a coffee shop yelling and offend the waitress?

I don't understand.

I have been expelled.

I have to live abroad because it affects my health. Does being the mayor's daughter give you character? It gives you a respect for politics that you don't learn any other way.

Mayors and councilors do an extraordinary job, most of the time without pay.

And they are indeed in the management of public life.

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