“Then I had sex that night”

Jorge Javier Vazquez He turned 54 last Thursday, and after a year as eventful as a roller coaster, he is once again the presenter of the moment: with several programmes on air, and with good audiences, having renewed his contract with Mediaset until 2027 and launching a daily format that begins this Monday taking the place of Así es la vida, after the news and before TardeAR. That has him promoting himself and giving interviews. If a few days ago he told Informalia that the frenetic pace of Sálvame prevented him from assimilating what was happening, this Sunday he tells us in The country how was the stroke he had in 2019.

The presenter recalls that he suffered the stroke “in a nightclub in Marrakech”. The Badalona native explains that when he regained consciousness, he continued dancing: “Then I had sex that night,” he adds. “The next day I ended up in an after-party,” he says. “I only have good memories of the stroke. Until the following week, when I went to the hospital, I didn’t find out how serious it was. Afterwards I had post-traumatic stress and depression. It was the first time I took pills, Prozac. For me, the pandemic and the death of Mila Ximénez were much worse. The stroke was a setback. Although the doctor told me that I had been close to death.”

The chilling story of Jorge Javier Vázquez was on hiatus just a year ago, with the Sálvame universe recently exterminated, just like Deluxe, and his friends, the producers of the program, about to be kicked out on the street by Alessandro Salem, Paolo Vasile’s successor and Jorge Javier’s current boss.

Everything has changed: he has just renewed his contract with Mediaset, he triumphs with Supervivientes All Stars and returns to the channel’s afternoons with Jorge’s diary, a version of El diario de Patricia, the talk show that aired successfully twenty years ago. It is unknown how it will work, but just in case the philologist already has homework for the next season: he will also present Gran Hermano, Supervivientes and Hay una cosa que te quiero decir.

In the interview with El País, Jorge Javier also recalls that a year ago he was thinking about being fired and receiving compensation: “My mother was very worried. When I explained to her what they had to pay me, she said: “I’m going to pray that they fire you.”

She also weighs in on its ideological significance, as well as saying that in this she has nothing to do with her network colleague, Ana Rosa Quintana: “I started talking more about politics during the pandemic. But I realised that in entertainment programmes you shouldn’t add fuel to the fire. We are living in such a polarised time. Everyone knows that I vote for Pedro Sánchez, that I am in favour of amnesty, that Judge Peinado no longer knows what to do to do the triple somersault in the case of Begoña Gómez.