Interview Albert Espinosa | “I predicted that Messi would win a World Cup, but I didn’t get it right with my death”

When he was 14 years old and considering a future as a Barça goalkeeper, Albert Espinosa he was diagnosed with cancer. He spent 10 years admitted to the hospital fighting it, experiences that he used to write ‘Fourth floor’ and ‘Polseres vermelles’. From the desire to recover the trips to school that the disease took from him, ‘The way home’a program in which he will accompany six celebrities on the journeys they took to go to school when they were children: Jesulín de Ubrique, Luis Tosar, Rosa López, Fernando Tejero, Ana Peleteiro and Pocholo Martínez-Bordiú. La Sexta premieres it this Thursday, May 4, at 10:45 p.m.

He has written books, theater, films and series, he has directed, he has acted as an actor in ‘Summer Grandma’, but it is the first time he has acted as a presenter.

It’s funny because I have already received offers from other channels in case I had more programs. By the time you play the presenter, they already see you as the presenter. I have always had a ‘late night’ and a contest in my head.

With ‘El camino a casa’, did you take revenge on fate, which denied you that daily trip to school since you were 14 years old?

I always mythologized that way home. She remembered it as the moment of freedom. I had had the idea for the program for years, and one day when I went to ‘El hormiguero’ I told Pablo Motos and Jorge Salvador about it and I proposed that they produce it. In 24 or 36 hours, Atresmedia said yes. It is the project that they have bought me faster, by far.

His goal is to make all the famous people cry. And she has achieved it.

I like people to get excited. I told the team that my idea is for the guests to cry, and they told me that it would be difficult with Luis Tosar or Pocholo. With some it cost more, but all cry with emotion, not sadness.

Jorge Salvador will be right, who says that you are an emotional terrorist.

I like to be. In ‘El hormiguero’ they have a beautiful phrase that says: “Today they have come to have fun”. Well, I told them: “Today you have come to get excited.”

When he was diagnosed with cancer, he was considering a future as a Barça goalkeeper.

I played in the Barça fry. I was doing goalkeeper tests, which went very well, and two weeks later I was diagnosed with cancer. It hurts me to say it, but it was very good. In ‘El camino a casa’ I compete with Jesulín demonstrating our skills, because he also says that he is very good at playing soccer. Now that I have done a series of Barça’s Masía, it was like remembering those times.

“They told me it would be difficult to make Luis Tosar and Pocholo cry. But they all cry”

What process is this series in?

I have written seven chapters about what the Barça Masía is like, but fictionalized with actors. Like ‘Polseres vermelles’, but in a country house. Now Barça Studios is negotiating with a ‘streaming’.

It has broken the forecasts. As a child he was given a 3% chance of survival because of cancer and is about to hit 50.

I lost my leg, my lung and part of my liver and they didn’t give much for me because I suffered from cancer that pulverizes 85% of children. It was the same as that of Luis Enrique’s daughter. I got lucky with an alternative treatment from San Francisco that they tried on me. I don’t know what they gave me, but since I was 24 years old I haven’t set foot in the hospital again.

You predicted your own death for April 23, 2023. You were wrong too.

It was in the novel ‘The best thing about going is coming back’, which took place in the year 2074 and recounted things like Messi winning a World Cup scoring a double, that there would be a pandemic and a war. All this I predicted! And about artificial intelligence, because those robots that appear in history are about to arrive. It occurred to me to kill myself and I chose that date because I really like Sant Jordi, although I did not succeed with my death. I think thinking about death gives a lot of life. But now I dare not say another date.

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He is very clear that he has three books left to write and a series. How accurate?

I believe a lot in phases. Every six years your life changes. Now I am very clear that I want to devote myself to presenting programs that I have in mind, and for that you have to leave things behind. In his day I left the theater to do more television and movies. I have three books left, and the idea is many ‘The way home’, but also contests and ‘late nights’. A new phase in my life begins that I really want, which is to go from behind the cameras to the front.



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