Rosa Montero remembers her most surreal interview: “I did it mendacity on a carpet” | Leisure and tradition

With greater than two thousand interviews behind her, Rosa Montero has requested tough and compromising inquiries to actors, politicians, musicians, and even dictators. Pioneer and instance of many ladies who got here after her, the journalist and columnist of ‘El País’ united her two international locations, journalism and literature, in the course of the 5 many years that her skilled profession has lasted.

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This Thursday, Rosa Montero sits down with Lara Siscar to assessment in ‘En Primicia’ among the most consultant moments of her lengthy skilled profession. Childhood mates, skilled colleagues, and even a few of her interviewees, such because the Minister of the Inside Fernando Grande-Marlaska, come collectively to speak about Montero’s human high quality, her inexhaustible curiosity and her positivity and braveness. excessive of it.

The author, novelist and essayist got here to ‘El País’ to revolutionize the newsroom. Together with her personal type, Montero managed to vary the masthead’s type ebook in order that the interviews stopped following the traditional question-answer construction. “It is one thing I am happy with,” admits the journalist. It was exactly these lengthy talks with personalities of every kind that boosted her profile. Rosa Montero acknowledges that the “want and pleasure of touring to others” was what motivated her curiosity in doing interviews. “I like folks. I am eager about figuring out what they assume,” she provides.

‘Essentially the most ridiculous interview’

One of the surreal interviews that the chronicler has needed to face was with Ayatollah Khomeini, shortly earlier than the Revolution triumphed in Iran. The interview befell in a city just a few hundred kilometers from Paris, when the Shah had already been kicked out. “They compelled me to cowl my head with a veil, however not simply my head, my eyebrows too,” says Montero.

The journalist remembers intimately how they requested her in the course of the interview to maintain her head under that of the Ayatollah. “It was actually sophisticated as a result of Khomeini was an outdated man, very small, who was additionally sitting on the ground,” Montero describes with fun. “It is essentially the most ridiculous interview I’ve ever executed in my life. I needed to do it virtually mendacity on the carpet,” she explains to Lara Siscar, whereas she imitates the posture she needed to undertake earlier than the Ayatollah.

The interview with the Iranian chief price Rosa Montero some criticism from the left, since she had no disgrace in questioning the Ayatollah. “Khomeini was a personality who created expectations, that we thought he was going to be a liberator. However Rosa was capable of painting him as he was,” says journalist and good friend of Montero, Nativel Preciado. Shortly after the interview, Khomeini returned to Iran and the primary public executions in stadiums started to be recognized. “Rosa is sort of visionary,” highlights Preciado.