The journalist Pere Ríos, an expert in judicial information, died this Saturday in Barcelona after fighting bravely against a serious illness
A good professional, but above all a friend of his friends. The journalist Pere Ríos (Sant Boi de Llobregat, 1962) He passed away this Saturday afternoon after fighting bravely against a serious illness. He has fought until the end and has held on to life until the last second. Graduated in Information Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and in Law from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, the world of Law had always attracted him and he jumped into the ring when he worked as a court specialist at ‘El País’, the latest newspaper where he worked before falling ill. He also worked in the reporting and society section of the newspaper ‘El Observador’, from its inception to its closure, as well as in ‘Diari de Barcelona’ and ‘Avui’, in both cases in events and courts.
Personally, he was ironic, sarcastic, grumpy, a fight, direct and very critical (as a server and Carol Espona remember him), but with a way of being that made him close to people. “This is over & rdquor ;, he came to tell me at the hospital hours before he left. Brilliant, neat and precise in his chronicles, he delved into that world of justice that seduced him to the marrow. To such an extent that he, with so many robes around him, fell in love with a magistrate, María Sanahuja, his current partner.
That passionate way of doing things and giving everything He not only captured it in his legal expert texts, but later transferred it to his articles on Catalan politics. He never forgot his professional roots. He began his career in the world of journalism as a correspondent in Baix Llobregat and L’Hospitalet from the newspaper ‘El País’, to which he returned in 1996 as a court writer.
Grand Tibidabo and Banca Catalana
Since then, he has covered information on the most important judicial matters in Catalonia. To name a few: the decapitalization of Grand Tibidabo; the corrupt plot of the Treasury inspectors; the judicial corruption case of Lluís Pasqual Estevill; the Treball and Pallerols cases, referring to the financing of Unió Democràtica. That extensive experience and his interest in getting to the bottom of any matter encouraged him to write the book ‘Banca Catalana: caso abierto’, in which he explained “what was not told about the scandal that enriched Jordi Pujol & rdquor ;, according to its cover. And he counted for the prologue with two of his main protagonists: the prosecutors Carlos Jimenez Villarejo and Jose Maria Mena.
It was then, during those long and intense trials and during the interminable waits in the courts awaiting statements from one or the other, when Pere opened wide to fill the time with conversations (and the occasional gossip) about the day by day and, above all, about journalism, a profession that he loved and that he always said was “the best in the world”. An upright journalist.
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An anecdote: he was one of the drivers and promoters that even now a group of colleagues continue to play the Christmas lottery every year. It was an excuse to see us at the Mesón Castellano (a few steps from the Audiencia de Barcelona) and relive old moments or be able to explain how we were doing in our respective media or in our lives.
Despite the fact that Pere stopped making courts in 2011 to cover the information related to the PSC, that group of friends and journalists saw each other every year to exchange the numbers of the Christmas lottery. He was always the one who did the excel with the numbers we played or reminded us how many tenths we had to buy. The promise (full of irony) was that if he played something we would go to spend a few days to Marina d’Or (Oropesa de Mar). He never touched us enough. On WhatsApp there is still a group with the heading ‘Lottery 2022’, which this February Saturday is sad.