This Sunday, Salvados returned to La Sexta with a new season. However, this first installment was different from the usual ones, since Gonzo, its presenter, also became one of the protagonists. Both he and the rest of the guests revealed the abuse suffered at the hands of some teachers at their Jesuit school.
Such were the despicable episodes that all of them suffered, including Gonzo, that, to this day, the consequences are still palpable. In fact, the journalist assured that when everything goes wrong, who he sees in his mind is “that teacher enjoying himself.” This first episode of denunciation of abuse in the Church is overwhelming.
“Today is a special chapter. It is, without a doubt, the Salvados that has cost me the most to do because for the first time I am one of the protagonists of the story that we are going to tell you,” Gonzo began by confessing on his return to Salvados.
“In May 2022, the newspaper El País publishes the conclusions of an investigation into physical and sexual abuse in religious schools in our country and one of those schools, Jesuitas de Vigo, was my school. This time I had to pick up the phone, but to call family members and classmates and teachers with whom I lived during those years and among all of us we began to remember,” he explained.
Then, the presenter became one of the protagonists of this installment by openly revealing what happened to him and how these abuses continue to affect him today. “What changed me as a child was the insult due to physical appearance,” he reflected with his former classmates. "The teacher called me 'fat man', 'elephant, get out of class' and the rest of the people laughed," he explained.
“For me, like many others, when I was six, seven or eight years old, there was powerful physical violence, insults... It was like what now has a name: bullying,” said Gonzo, who, when remembering his teacher Don Pepe, The first thing that comes to mind is “ring, knuckle and nock.”
However, despite the passing of the years, the journalist amazed the audience by confessing the consequences of which he is still aware today. Those experiences have marked him forever and he cannot forget them.
“Sometimes when I see myself on television and I see that I have asked a bad question or the program is not good or I see criticism on television... the first thing that comes to mind is the image of that teacher enjoying himself in at home reading those bad things about the program I may be working on,” he stated.
In fact, for Gonzo “it seems frightening that at forty-something years old, when something goes wrong for me, the first thing I think is that there are people who are enjoying it, people that I have never seen again in my life. These are things that affected my way of being, I do say that they won a little,” lamented the presenter of Salvados.
