In a country where news anchors become queens, the queen of the news abdicates and leaves the throne vacant. And not for lack of replacements, since the offspring of this form of television nobility is large and vigorous. There must be no shortage of good news presenters, both public and private, very worthy of the dignified lineage in which they were raised, but I fear that none of them fit the crown. They may be Charles of England, not Queen Elizabeth. Her name is Ana Blanco and, since yesterday, we viewers have to get used to living without her. I correct: we have to resign ourselves, because absences are always suffered.
The framed face of Ana Blanco, with her canonical hairstyle and her imperturbable seriousness, served as Madonna in the disbelieving and secular Spain of democracy. A real, Renaissance Madonna, like that of Antonello da Messina, not like that of Like a Virgin. An icon with an accent, like the Byzantines, not like the icons without an accent in pop. And not because the teleprompter was a revealed word nor because its appearance following the Telediario tune was a Marian apparition, but because its image on the screen was a sign of unity in a country that prefers signs of discord. Ana Blanco came out and everyone listened with innocence and attention. Even the most cynical in the neighborhood agreed.
That is why Ana Blanco has been the Madonna of TVE with four presidents, two popular and two socialist. She started with Aznar and she has retired with Sánchez without the spectators most attentive to the direction of the winds blowing from Moncloa detecting a single disheveled hair. She might already rain ministerial fire and agitprop regarding Torrespaña, that Ana Blanco gave the daily informative Eucharist with the same calmness and that strange and brilliant way of marking style, renouncing all the traits of personal style, to put her gesture, look and voice at the service of neutrality.
I don’t know what we are going to miss more, that divine ability to transcend itself (in this hyper-sentimental era that demands the opposite) or its elegance for consensus. From today we live in a new era, the d. AB ―following Ana Blanco―, and I anticipate that it will not be easy or pretty.
Receive the television newsletter
to continue reading
_
