Antonio Villarreal: The Original Sin of Political Talk Shows Is That People Like Them a Lot

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—We kicked off the new season by confirming the importance that authorities still assign to influential journalists.

—In the Interior Ministry report, most of the analyzed individuals are journalists, but it focuses on those who participate in tertulias. This is because right now those in power — government, autonomous communities, even municipalities — are particularly interested in this type of profile for their ability to modulate public opinion. It is very difficult, or impossible, to change the facts: you cannot alter that a train derailed or what happened this summer in Ceuta, but you can modulate how people receive that information, because it is known that many people receive it directly through the tertulias. Hence political actors know that, with the right avatar inside the tertulia, they can nuance what happened, recall that this also happened in another country, or stress that the blame for anything is spread across different administrations. It is also not by chance that the tertulian is monitored, given that politicians also participate in these tables and want to know exactly with whom they are debating.

—Last month, there was a clear renewal of names at the helm of the main morning radio programs. New hosts who will inherit tertulianos and seek others to their liking. El País interviewed one of them, Aimar Bretos as director of the Hoy por hoy program on the SER network. Bretos said there were not too many tertulias, but that the concept needed to evolve, that it should mutate into something different. He argued for the inclusion of commentators who are experts in thematic areas. Do you also think the current formula is exhausted? And in times of such polarization, does that commitment to specialization against the figure of the todológo (jack-of-all-trades), which despite much criticism continues to proliferate, amount to a self-deluding gesture?

—First of all, it is commendable that Aimar Bretos wants to pursue this kind of more specialized, less generalist tertulia, and I hope he achieves it, but the truth is that it has been attempted many times and it has been seen that eventually the current events consume everything. When something happens, people demand immediately to know what is happening on the ground. However, sending a journalist to explain on the ground what is happening costs money. Instead, with lower cost, the tertuliano resolves it in half an hour, whether it is a rail disaster or a protest in Puerta del Sol. The tertulianos fill a gap that the media currently needs to cover, which is the super-fast response to what is happening in the world. The media have fewer correspondents, fewer resources, fewer bureaux, etc. And let us not fool ourselves: the tertulia has proven to be a format capable of addressing that loss of capacity. Moreover, the original sin of tertulias is that people love them. You may consider having a geopolitical specialist, but in the end the listener or viewer seems to respond more to a voice they recognize as close and that aligns with their political interests. This becomes an incentive for things not only not to change, but to end up perpetuating themselves. The same voices again and again telling people what people want to hear.

—That’s at the heart of the book: we form an opinion about things not by reading news in one or more outlets but by shaping that opinion almost exclusively from those other opinions, the tertulianos, who are closer to our worldview.

—That was one of the reasons that drove me to investigate this phenomenon as well. On the one hand, as a journalist I encountered daily many colleagues who went to and from tertulias constantly. Sometimes I would think, “If tomorrow there’s an attack, where will this person be? Covering the attack for the newspaper or talking about it on a tertulia?” And surely many of them face that conflict. But on the other hand, I also started to notice how friends, family, or neighbors around me ended up reproducing the arguments I had heard that morning on the turno’s tertulia. They don’t repeat word for word what they heard, of course—they dress it in their own terms, but it’s clear that the received idea is external to them and ends up taking root. Governments, fully aware of this, know that it’s possible to plant a seed with an argument that can modulate to a large extent what citizens end up saying, thinking, or voting for.

—In the book you give the current average figure of 150 euros gross per appearance. I imagine young tertulianos will be astonished when they read what Ramón Tamames could have earned for a single exclusive appearance in a tertulia back in the day. Is presenting them as journalists for this or that newspaper sufficient publicity for the print or digital outlets that pay their salaries to overlook the pay disparity with colleagues who put in far more hours in the newsroom?

—They are usually figures with responsibilities that I wouldn’t say are fictional, because they have decision-making power, but they are not the same posts as in the past. All that has changed a lot. One pictures the editor of a media outlet from thirty years ago, very involved in every aspect of the edition that will go out the next day, talking with the bosses, etc. Their role as ambassadors of the brand has become more pronounced, with the mission of representing the news their newspaper provides, the editorial line… And that presence in the newsroom is often delegated to a number two, a deputy editor. On the other hand, with the precariousness of the media, not being able to pay their journalists as much as they would like, they rely on the extra income from tertulias. It is a very perverse incentive, as we were saying: with a piece of news in front of you, where will you tell it?

—There is also that social capital, “powerful and intangible,” that comes from being a tertuliano and that can compensate for the gradual drop in fees.

—It has to be said that a tertulia, taken individually, might seem like little money, but there are so many that if you do eight tertulias a month, the resulting figure becomes something else. Attending a tertulia once a week yields 600 to 800 euros that you can add to your monthly paycheck. Now imagine if you go two or three times a week. Regarding social capital, the tertuliano also values that they will be able to sit and speak one-on-one with high-ranking officials, ministers, presidents, and company directors. They will be invited to more events simply because they’ve been seen on television. Even many politicians start paying attention to them not for what they have read in their publication, but because they have seen them there giving their opinions. In short, it opens another kind of professional and personal doors, and that is something that can be considered part of success. It is a reason, especially in political journalism, to want to be on the tertulias.

—Do you think political tertulia has devalued over the years compared to the era when hosts had more freedom to choose the tertulianos they deemed appropriate?

—Ten or twenty years ago there were far fewer tertulias. Like with any product, when supply floods the market, value goes down, because the pundits have more places to choose from. In the nineties, for example, some pundits were paid very well to have them exclusively. As what you are paid per tertulia has collapsed, they’re almost forced to move from one to another in a kind of procession, which slightly devalues that original voice. Add to this what we’ve already said: political actors are trying to intervene directly or indirectly. And then there’s the trend toward sensationalism, which has meant that other profiles—perhaps a couple of decades ago we would never have imagined—have entered the tertulia.

—For example?

—Well, someone who suddenly comes from the world of social media or who doesn’t have a concrete résumé, but who speaks very well before the camera or mic. You see how they’re gaining space and you might one day wonder how this person is talking to us about international law without it being clear what credentials they have for it. Now anyone can hack their entry into tertulias.

—Are we talking about influencers with many followers?

—The term influencer as someone who sells things on Instagram isn’t exactly the same. Instead, someone who has amassed a significant number of followers on X, for instance, and who has a recognizable ideology, that person has been entering for many years now. These profiles have gradually become a familiar face and are already among us. They call themselves analysts and they are highly sought after because they attract a lot of people and because they bring the tertulia to social networks or to their own channel. The tertuliano from the previous generation didn’t manage to give it that projection.

—Can we say that the most sought-after tertuliano is not the most educated, not even the best speaker but, in Darwinian terms, the one who best adapts to the circumstances?

—Indeed, adaptation is the key. Before, you could identify who spoke on economics or who spoke about the Government, because those were the topics they mastered. You’d see that on other topics they would step back or refrain from making grandiose statements. Now everyone participates with an iPad or phone at hand because that allows them to react very quickly, a skill that impressed me when I followed them closely. They do it to research a topic they didn’t know two minutes earlier and to be able to contribute an opinion. You see how they seize the advertising breaks or the seconds the host speaks, frantically taking notes. When it’s their turn, they speak knowledgeably about the Strait of Hormuz or about a company on the Ibex. They know it’s essential never to remain silent. In fact, it never happens that you turn on the radio and there’s a lull in a tertulia because no one knows what to say.

—I sense that anyone who grew up listening to tertulias in the eighties or early nineties could name far more men than women from those years. In the book you note that today this is completely different, that there is balance, and you add a striking fact: on televised tertulias women show a more combative tone.

—I cite a very interesting study that reveals that women, known for being more affable, interrupt their tablemates more. According to the author, Marina González-Sanz, a discourse analysis researcher at the University of Seville, this could be because they try to behave like men, given they have to navigate a traditionally very masculinized environment. I don’t know if that is it or simply that their character, their way of debating, is different. In any case, representation is complete because the chooser knows they will yield as much or more play than their male counterparts.

—There is no gender-based discrimination. And ageism? Is the experience of someone who has been debating for decades valued?

—There is no ageism. In fact, there are many who have spent more than three decades in the field. Even Ramón Tamames (92), when I spoke with him, continued attending a tertulia at Capital Radio. In the end, it’s not so much a question of age as of the affinity you have with the host. The host will always look for someone they like, but also a mix of personalities that generate electricity among them, capable of lending lightness to a moment that is becoming tangled. They know very well the profiles they want and how to combine them. That explains why some have been around for so many years. And they will probably remain as long as their health allows.

—You claim that the political tertulia is the only genuine radio genre in democratic Spain. Would that be the reason we seem to like this format much more than in other countries in our region? Do we need, more than other cultures, someone who comes every morning to interpret reality for us?

—Every country has its own history, and the press has earned recognition for enjoying it in different ways in each place. Spain started from a different situation due to the limits imposed by a dictatorship. When democracy finally arrived, there was a surge in tertulias, mainly because people were eager to hear political debates and speak publicly with freedom. Many people told me that in the eighties this was something very Spanish that did not happen elsewhere. And it’s true that there are places like the BBC where they could not conceive of a format like tertulias in which there might be, for example, an imbalance of positions. Nevertheless, seeing its success, many other countries have gradually granted tertulia increasing prominence, especially since the 2008 crisis. There are more tables and more opinion, because it is liked, cost-efficient, and it draws audiences.