• Literature Three days and two nights in Juan del Val's New York: "The world of letters is full of self-conscious people, much more than television"

They say that where there is trust it is disgusting and this at some point in last night's interview must have been thought by Juan del Val. This time the polemicist number one of El Hormiguero was not as such but as a writer who goes to the most watched program on television to talk about his book: his new novel Bocabesada, which has gone on sale today.

And as the child who goes to school for the first time, he wanted to give the best image of himself. In fact, at the beginning of the interview, Pablo Motos, who has already read the novel, pointed out that what he liked most about the book was that it speaks "of the secret desperation of being loved." That need to be liked, to be accepted, to be loved. "Deep down, everything we do in life is to be accepted and loved," said Juan de Val. From there the whole interview revolved around that or, at least, for Juan del Val.

Literature

Literature.

Three days and two nights in Juan del Val's New York: "The world of letters is full of self-conscious people, much more than television"

  • Editor: SARA POLO (Special Envoy)New York

Three days and two nights in Juan del Val's New York: "The world of letters is full of self-conscious people, much more than television"

It sounds weird, especially when it comes from someone whose main job on television is to create controversy. He has always said that he does it with humor without intending to harm anyone, but controversy always leaves, so you could say that not everyone likes Juan de Val. The good thing is that the others bring it to Juan del Val to the pairo. That "everyone loves me" refers to his family, his wife Nuria Roca, his friends. And, look where Juan del Val, who last night was not going with any intention of raising any unnecessary blister, who had not awakened the Juan del Val polemicist or destroyer, found himself with the last of his shoe, with the 'betrayal' of his friend, of a Pablo Motos who went to sack from the beginning and who ended up revealing what Juan del Val had no intention of revealing.

How many times have we seen someone leave Juan del Val speechless? Well, since last night Pablo Motos can already check the box of things that remain to be done before he dies. Juan del Val was silent, he did not know where to leave, he did not know what to answer, or what to tell, or how to do it. Again, as he himself recognized, because of that need to be loved. And Juan del Val is not willing to let Pablo Motos be one of those who can stop loving him. Before it burns all the ships.

When last week, Pablo Motos announced the guests of the week and there was Juan del Val, who had not been a solo guest for a long time, my first thought was 'he's going to mess it up'. I have to admit, I couldn't be more wrong. Juan del Val, who was supposed to present a novel, did the same thing that the last time he was in El Hormiguero as a renowned writer with his novel Valparaíso (by the way it is now going to be a series on a platform), he went to tell everything that nobody knew about Juan del Val.

So when last night Juan del Val began to tell what he had already told, the interest was deflated. But Pablo Motos knew how to get it out of that moment of philosophy existence in which a Juan del Val had entered who cries out against posturing, but Bocabesada is going to be promoted to New York: "Being coherent all the time is a nuisance".

And so, which has rarely been done with the guest writers -where there is confidence it disgusts-, Pablo Motos was reading passages of the novel, as ifEl Hormiguero had become a select book club. And through those passages, Juan del Val was entering each half veronica that Pablo Motos was doing. Wanting to be loved.

The posture of Juan del Val in El Hormiguero

"They say you're a pimp," Pablo Motos blurted out. "I am a prisoner of my image. When people see me they make a 'jo' gesture, and I say, 'why 'jo''. I am a prisoner of that image and I may have promoted it," he replied. "It's a very cool answer." Zas! And that, according to Pablo Motos, the difficult thing had not yet begun. It seemed that between the two there had been a previous agreement between friends or between presenter and guest, let's call it what you want. Because the destroyerr, which should have been Juan del Val, became Pablo Motos, while Juan del Val, although grown because after all he was presenting his novel in the very Anthill, was the sensitive, the delicate, the one who last night needed more love than anything else.

"This first part has been easy and now come the powerful questions," Pablo Motos told him before going to publicity. The truth is that in the second part of the interview Pablo Motos let Juan del Val himself decide how far he wanted to show himself. Juan del Val showed, yes, but on many occasions with the brake on.

He did say that he had a happy childhood, but in adolescence "everything went wrong and fear entered." "I remember spending years of my life with a knot in my stomach, with anxiety and fear of everything, of uncertainty, of tomorrow dawning...", said the writer.

Juan del Val's anguish was so great that he could not be at a table with several diners because he was distressed; If he thought about the future he asked, he begged to have a house because in his head it was that he was going to end up living under a bridge. "I insisted on it being like that all the time," he said last night. "I was a bad student, they threw me out of high schools – I never passed any – and all that makes you ball. Such was my incoherence that when I was 16 years old I joined the communist youth and at the same age I went to adult catechesis. Because I was looking for a place to develop. And I ended up working with concrete wheelbarrows."

He also spoke of his mother, of the strength she has, "she is the strongest in the universe", and of what it means for someone weak to be close to her. "First because he wants to get you out of there immediately. I have always had the feeling that I could not fail. And that always happens to me. I do not allow myself failurer. It's not easy. That idea that is great for people who are bad because it gives you an engine, does not let you stop to be sad. We were always faced with my inability to get sad. This has cost me years of being able to do it, "confessed the collaborator of El Hormiguero.

In fact, Juan del Val has overcome that constant need to be loved, that fear of failing and that inability to be sad with psychiatric treatment. It was in his teens when "after a very unpleasant situation," he sat down with his mother and said, "Mom, I'm not." His mother then replied, "No, you're not well." And from that moment, more than 30 years ago, Juan del Val was put into treatment. "What the treatment has given me is to really know myself. And you can't run away from yourself anymore. You can no longer blame the other but you have to look at yourself (...) It was long and it was difficult because you are always alone, because there is no one to blame, "he revealed last night before the eyes of a Pablo Motos who had not yet activated the bomb that was going to hit Juan del Val without seeing it coming.

Suddenly, when Juan del Val was telling the importance of putting himself in the hands of a specialist to overcome mental health problems, Pablo Motos released him and Juan del Val did not see it coming. "In the book you talk about friendship. What is friendship for you?" asked Motos. Juan del Val had inadvertently already fallen into the trap: "Friendship apart from love is communication". He meant that you know you have a friend when a fool enters the same room and the two friends look at each other and with a single glance they know what each one is saying.

The worst crisis of Pablo Motos and Juan del Val

It was the foot that Pablo Motos needed: "You and I are very friends, but before summer we had a very fat crisis because they made you an offer of a lot of money from another chain and I took it very badly. What was the worst for you?":

Juan del Val did not know what to answer, he did not even know what to do with his hands, or with his face, or with anything. Pablo Motos, speaking in silver, had caught him in panties. He hesitated and came up with a "what was the question?", followed by a "fuck, macho", which meant nothing more than "how the fuck do you do this to me!". Well, he did. I do not know if Pablo Motos had it prepared or if he took it out of the hat by art of birlibirloque, but it dislocated Juan del Val completely. And he said it again: "This whole interview is revolving around the need to be loved."

"When did you have the worst time, when the process or when you decided to stay and we drank the most fake beer that you and I have ever had?, Motos insisted to the silent response of his friend. And then Juan del Val started to discover that if he did not leave El Hormiguero it was not because what they offered him was not better but because of the love of Pablo Motos.

"I thought about when it happened and I thought about it afterwards. It is true that when someone calls you and tells you they want to comfort you. What happened to me with you is that I was very afraid that you would stop being my friend. I knew it couldn't be because you and I had built one thing many years ago. Maybe at that moment I prolong a decision that I had already made for that childish thing that they loved me, but that you stopped being my friend was crap, "answered Juan del Val very distressed. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, grief-stricken. It turns out that, although it seems difficult, Juan del Val is a very sensitive, not cheesy, sensitive person.

"Then, after a rehearsal you go up to my dressing room and tell me that we haven't fixed it and that you want me to tell you what I really think of you," Motos said later. "And I told you that at that time I couldn't and that I needed time," he concluded. "At the end of life the only important thing is the truth. You can catch me in many ways but never fleeing and less from a friend of mine. Meeting people in life is work and luck. Crossing paths with you in life is one of the biggest lucky strokes of my life." Pablo Motos wanted to dismantle Juan del Val, break his armor and the one who ended up without a life jacket was him.

And after this, how can an interview be followed? It's complicated. The two broke with each other. And for a lot of hugging, a lot of peace sealed live, resuming was difficult. So they returned to posturing, to that of "when the intellectual elite begins to despise what people like because they are in a watchtower that has put their own posture on them": That their greatest fantasy would be to take the books of great authors of literature, remove their names and see what happens. To the fact that Juan del Val does not want to leave television nor will he leave it. He loves fame because he has known it from Nuria Roca's side and now from his side and here he is happy.

"I am very happy here. I've been tempted to talk to you and say 'I have to write and I can't come'. And it makes me very sad. In this place you can breathe good people. And I've been to quite a few places where this didn't happen." And it is that Juan del Val on TV feels loved and before that nobody can fight.

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