Many times we are not aware that behind some of the most famous people on the planet there are hard stories of resilience. Oprah Winfrey grew up in extreme poverty in the Midwest of the United States, wearing dresses made from potato sacks; Cristiano Ronaldo grew up in Funchal (Madeira) in a family that had to rely on workers from a local McDonald’s to give him free hamburgers; and Jennifer Lopez, in her early days as a dancer, had no resources and ended up sleeping on the sofa of the very dance school.
Someone who has also spoken about his very humble origins in a working-class neighborhood is Vicente Vallés (Madrid, 1963), the star news presenter of Antena 3. Also a successful writer, the journalist has just released on Onda Cero Podcast the documentary series Espías: key secret. In it he narrates with the pulse and rhythm of a thriller the stories of moles, betrayals and secret operations that defined the 20th century.
Holder of a degree in Journalism from the Faculty of Information Sciences at the Complutense University, Vicente Vallés always knew from a young age that radio was his passion and his dream came true when he joined Cadena SER in 1985. But before stepping in front of a microphone, his childhood was marked by circumstances very far from his current life.
“I was born in a shantytown behind the Rayo Vallecano stadium,” the Madrid periodista admitted in an interview with Zenda Libros. “I must have been about three years old and I lived with my parents in my paternal grandparents’ house, in a shack that my grandfather built with his own hands in the postwar era. And I remember stepping out to the door and playing with other children on a dirt street that, when it rained, turned to mud,” he added about those early childhood memories.
Vicente Vallés: “I am not the typical Madrilenian”
In this conversation about his early years, Vicente Vallés also spoke about his parents and his brother, José Antonio, also a journalist like him. “Both come from very humble families. In the case of my mother, an immigrant from Andalusia, there were six siblings who came in the early fifties to Madrid, from a small town in Jaén.”
Ángeles Blanco y Vicente Vallés.
Things have changed a lot for Vicente Vallés since that childhood living in the shack built by his grandfather. He currently lives with his wife, the also-journalist, Ángeles Blanco, in a two-story detached house with a private garden, located in a prestigious and quiet residential area in the north of Madrid.
While they try to balance family life and work, Vicente and Ángeles’ dream is to spend more time in the little paradise they have found a little over two thousand kilometers from the capital. Abades is a coastal village on the island of Tenerife that has become their sanctuary and where they try to escape whenever they can.
