Pepe Domingo Castaño died in the early hours of this Sunday, three weeks after turning 80 years old. He was treating his throat and was admitted to the La Zarzuela hospital in Madrid. A digestive infection was complicated by septicemia; the journalist was unable to overcome it after multiple organ failure. In Madrid it rains this September 17. The deceased predicted in his biography (Until I Run Out of Words, Aguilar 2022) that this was going to happen.
The sports journalist published his biography in February last year and dedicated the profits to Cáritas and Aesleme. “It’s my way of giving thanks to life for everything it has given me,” he said in promoting his book of life. As if it were a prediction, the book begins talking about rain, death and love. He says that he has loved more than hated.
He says he never hated. And he talks more about love: “Yes. I have received a lot of love of all types: carnal love, religious love, family love, shared love. I have had loves of all types and I do not regret any of them,” he writes . He also points out in his life’s work his terror of the afterlife: “I’m terrified of the afterlife.”
In the book, Pepe Domingo recounts his time at the Dominican convent of Asturias. “Everyone who has been interned at a very young age will think the same as me. Moving to a faraway place, leaving your family when you are so attached to it, abandoning your gang when it has just been formed. Leaving all that at once It’s very hard for a 9-year-old kid. What happened is that I got into studying. I liked it and I started getting good grades. When I read books by people who have been in a convent or monastery and they even talk about torture, Well, I don’t know. For me, within the sadness that I had, because I was a good Galician and we Galicians are basically sad, I remember that it was an extraordinary life,” he continues.
“Those people treated me wonderfully well. My time there was, above all, a time full of future. I grew up as a man of integrity, who owes himself to others. I also became aware that I alone cannot achieve anything; that I can’t do to anyone what I don’t want done to me; that you have to respect all ideas, and that you can discuss, but never let ideas blind you. I learned many things,” he says.
He was born in Padrón in 1942, into a humble family. There were twelve brothers
It has countless awards, including four Ondas. He began working in 1964 at Radio Galicia. He has gone through SER, where he was a star of Los 40 Principales, because he started talking about music, and through COPE, where he was currently an entertainer on Tiempo de Juego. He was also a singer, even reaching number one on the charts.
But before reaching the big radio stations, he started in the Dominican convent of Asturias. “Father Iparraguirre, whom I remember a lot because he was very nice, one day said: “We are going to set up a station to have fun.” Who volunteers?” The first was me. Then he took three of us, tested us and said: ‘You, Castaño, are going to be the voice.’ And that’s how it was. I was the voice of that station. We did plays theater; when we went on trips we wrote the chronicle; we interviewed the friars. When I went to Palencia, to the novitiate, Father Iparraguirre said goodbye to me and told me: “Castaño, I don’t know if you will continue in the order, because now he is coming the novitiate and you will have to decide, but know that, if you do not continue, You are going to be a radio announcer. You are very good and you are good for this.” Those words stuck in my mind and became a dream first, and then a reality,” Castaño recalls in his memoirs.
“I remember when I came to COPE everyone said: ‘Where are you going, man? You’re going to be surrounded by bishops there in the studio.’ And I arrived a little scared: ‘Where am I going?’. But the truth is It’s just that I didn’t see any bishop or priest, and I thought that people were very wrong about this chain. I have never had more freedom than when I have been in COPE. Freedom, affection, understanding, love,” he says Pepe Domingo black on white.