Journalists

Amestoy Eguiguren, Alfredo

Basque journalist, writer, publicist and communicator, born in Bilbao on 8 April 1941.

He lives in Madrid, where he has spent most of his journalistic career, although he has maintained a strong relationship with the Basque Country. He has been one of the pioneers of television communication and programming, in which he has been a true man. At TVE he starred in, directed and presented prime-time series in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century. He studied Journalism in Madrid (15th Promotion) and at the University of Navarra (First Promotion), after a baccalaureate that he began in Bilbao and continued in San Sebastian (Colegio de La Salle). He made his first contributions to the Bilbao press in the newspaper La Gaceta del Norte and the magazine Gran Vía, together with Luciano Rincón and Manuel Leguineche.

Later, he worked in Radio, in Cadena SER, Radio Madrid, in programmes directed by Bobby Deglané and José Luis Pecker ("Cabalgata Fin de Semana", among other programmes). It was at this radio station that he became the editor of the first private radio news programme in Spain in 1963. Editor of the Hispania Press Agency, he published regular sections in the newspapers "Pueblo", "Madrid" and "El Noticiero Universal" (Barcelona). He will be a street reporter in pages such as "Noches de Madrid" and "Noches de Barcelona". Editor-in-Chief at the SUNC Agency -Servicio Universal de Noticias y Colaboraciones- and correspondent for Interstampa, Italy, and "France Dimanche". He has written articles for the Madrid newspaper ABC, in whose Sunday paper he produced the first series in colour rotogravure: "España 66", in which a ten-page report on a Spanish province is presented each week.

In 1960 he made his first appearances on television (TVE), with Manuel Martín Ferrand, in programmes such as "Plaza de España". Always live, as Video-Tape did not yet exist. He made reports using celluloid as a support, an experience that would later allow him to practice "cinematographic" journalism in NO-DO. This background in press, radio and documentary film, as well as his cultivation of almost all journalistic genres, including events, in the newspaper El Caso; humour, in La Codorniz; cinema, in Fotogramas, the press of the heart, in magazines such as Hola and Garbo, and major reports in weeklies such as Gaceta Ilustrada and La Actualidad Económica, led to a return to television with news programmes such as "Esta es la Cuestión" and "La Vida". In 1967, this television programme reached audiences that, thanks to the television monopoly, but also to an unprecedented acceptance that was never ed, reached sixteen million viewers on a single winter night.

His versatility in journalism led him to make music programmes, quiz s and magazine programmes, from 1965 to 1975, with experiences in genres unheard of on television such as docudrama. "El Día de mañana", in which a pregnant mother - the actress Elisa Ramírez, as she was in a state of good hope - monologues with the child she is going to bring into the world. Later, the seventies and the eighties, another docudrama, "La España de los Botejara", would mark another milestone in documentary journalism. He also created special programmes for TV from the United States, such as Un planeta mejor, Ciudadano Americano and Citius, Altius, Fortius, and for a time he was editor of Telediario and omnibus programmes, such as "Sobre la Marcha". During the transition to democracy, he made other television programmes such as "Vivir para ver", which achieved audiences that surpassed those obtained by famous series such as "Heidi", "La casa de la pradera", "El Circo", "El Hombre y la Tierra" and "Un, dos tres". Another programme of great repercussion was the one made together with José Antonio Plaza, "Treinta y cinco millones de españoles". For these works, he received the National Television Award, as well as "El Quijote de Oro" and the "Popular" distinction, awarded by the newspaper "Pueblo"; he also received the Ondas Award and several awards from the magazine "TP".

"Trescientos Millones", the first European television programme via satellite, "La verdad de.", "Visto y no Visto", were his last programmes on TVE, before collaborating as programme director and circumstantial presenter on TELE 5. On this channel he wrote and performed in a comedy series, "A salto de cama". It was not the first time that he approached theatre as a comedian. His theatrical experience, which by now reaches half a dozen titles, had begun successfully in 1976, with the play "El Partido", premiered at the Teatro Lara and which reached more than two hundred performances.

There have been several collaborations in cinema, as an actor or as a scriptwriter, for example "La Casa de los Martínez", "La tercera puerta" or "¡Qué vida ésta! His participation in advertising has been as a communicator but also as a scriptwriter. As a creative he worked for almost a year in the American agency Spanish Advertising, in New York: the city where he got married in 1973. He has published several books on journalism: El reportero (1963); on humour, Últimas voluntades (1990) and on gastronomy: La Cocina de Paradores (1996), with Luis Cepeda, who in turn collaborated with Amestoy on programmes such as "Entre platos anda el juego" and "Comer es un placer" (Tele 5, 1995). Subsequently, he has resumed his press collaborations in El Mundo, ABC (Alfa y Omega), or the municipal newspaper Bilbao. In 2004, he collaborated as a scriptwriter in special programmes broadcast on TVE. On the social side, he continues his relationship with institutions such as the New York Television Academy, chairs a club he founded in Madrid in 1985, the "Amigos de la Boina" club, which brings together hundreds of people from the world of communication, business and liberal professionals from all over Spain, and belongs to the Asociación Amigos de la Gran Vía, in Madrid, the street where he lives, works and enjoys himself. Other activities that occupy more and more of his time are agriculture, specifically avocado growing, which he started in 1973 in Andalusia, and sea fishing.

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