Ana Blanco's discreet farewell: “Thank you so much for your trust and company all this time”

He Weekly report This Saturday, February 24, was the last time Ana Blanco was in front of the cameras as a TVE news presenter. The 63-year-old journalist has decided to take early retirement and, although her retirement will come into effect on March 29, her farewell in front of the cameras took place this Saturday. About her The last about her Weekly report, space that he has been presenting since September 2023, it was a special program focused on the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and his farewell was reduced to a few short words at the end: “For my part, that was it, thank you a thousand for the trust and company during all this time. Goodbye and good night.”

Previously, throughout the day, farewells and displays of affection were continuous from colleagues, who welcomed her into the editorial office with a long ovation, as demonstrated by the videos shared on social media. some of those and the official accounts of RTVE. Martín Barreiro, RTVE meteorologist, thanked him in X for his advice and underlined his humility, understanding and intelligence. Tony Aguilar recalled Blanco’s beginnings in the 1940s in Bilbao. From Informativos Telecinco, David Cantero, who was his partner in TV news from La 1, greeted her by sending her a kiss at the end of his news program. The president of the government, Pedro Sánchez, also had a memory for the journalist this Saturday in a tweet in which he cited her as “part of our audiovisual memory”, highlighted her “three decades of journalism, reliability and public television” and thanked her for covering current events with “closeness and rigor”.

The journalist preferred to retire without much fuss, refusing proposals to grant interviews in order to spend a few days in peace. The words of hers that are repeated more than her in the many messages of gratitude and praise that his colleagues dedicate to him in recent days are terms such as temperance, rigor, closeness, calm and simplicity. Jesús Álvarez, one of her professional partners in over 30 years of work at RTVE, highlighted Blanco’s ability to improvise live in a conversation with EL PAÍS a few years ago. “She IS very disciplined and aware that you have to know what you are going to say. “She always knows how to get out of any situation with elegance,” she said.

Blanco appeared in front of the cameras for the first time on September 15, 1990 to present the news program La 1. A few days earlier, in a video recovered this Saturday on TVE, a young Ana Blanco had been interviewed in another public network program for publicize the new faces of the news. “You impose a lot on me, I’m very nervous, but I think everything will be fine,” she later confessed.

It was she who hosted the longest news program in history, that of September 11, 2001, which reported the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Lara Siscar told this newspaper about Ana Blanco’s ability to control, making her the ideal person to take leadership in times when current events are frenetic. “No matter how many hours she spends in the image, she is in absolute control of everything. You earn experience, but you also have to have it in the game,” Siscar said of her partner.

Born in Portugalete (Bizkaia) and graduated in Pedagogy, Ana Blanco took her first steps in the world of media on the radio in Bilbao, but quickly made the leap to the capital and, after a few years in Telemadrid, in 1990 she signed for TVE , where he became a daily face for millions of viewers. Her solvency and credibility have made her an essential name within the news and, in her over 33 years of experience in the public channel, she has presented almost all editions of the news, as well as special programmes, spaces such as I have a question for you and numerous electoral appointments. In total, he hosted more than 7,400 news programs on TVE.

In 2022 he decided to leave his post at the helm of the after-dinner edition of La 1 News and thus stop presenting the news. In September 2023 he joins Weekly report, space which she had already hosted between 2007 and 2009 and where she was last seen as a host.

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