Julio Muñoz Gijón (Sevilla, 42 years old) believes he is “just part of Rancio” and not the other way around. There are more than 100,000 Followers on X (the old Twitter) I know what he means: this Sevillian journalist who started as a television reporter 15 years ago – his “first hit” was broadcasting for the Spanish direct broadcast about the Lorca earthquake in 2011, when the Lorca bell tower literally collapsed next to him , the city church, was one of the first to recognize the potential of social networks. In this universe of few characters but maximum interaction, he first appeared in 2012 as @Rancio, an irreverent and snarky alter ego for which he is known and even revered to this day, with a legion of fans that is growing exponentially.
Humor has allowed him to place the iron character of the traditional Sevillian, guardian of the essences, in the mirror of his contradictions – that is: from Holy Week and the orthodoxy in the traditions to his most unique characters: José Manuel Soto, Lopera… No one missed Rancio's tweets– and it was the seed of everything that came after: author of novels with great public response – with more than 100,000 copies sold –, screenwriter of documentaries for various television platforms, participant in a reality show and even beer entrepreneur – that's what he did Julio Muñoz created the beer “Rancia” to the delight of his followers – Julio Muñoz also worked for eight years as head of digital communications in the Spanish football team (“I never thought that being fired by Rubiales would be an achievement that would be added to the CV “would,” he jokes).
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It was during the years he lived in Madrid that @Rancio was born in response to an ever-increasing homesickness for his homeland. Back in Seville, Julio Muñoz is now celebrating his four-year anniversary as a reference for humorous and topical programs on Cadena SER Andalucía. At the head of the daily program “La Cámara de los Balones”, a review of current sports news in a hilarious tone, and the newly created magazine “No puede SER” (on Cadena SER+), in which he puts everything that this combination has taught into the Muñoz, who is interested in social networks and humor, makes it clear when he talks about his relationship with the airwaves: “Radio is probably what I enjoy the most: it creates a complicity with whoever is listening to you, what “can't be achieved with a book or with television,” admits the all-terrain journalist, who has a lot of Clark Kent: “I go into the cabin and quickly change my suit.”
Julio Muñoz during the interview with EL PAÍS. PACO PUENTES
“Welcome to the radio that can be seen, the radio of laughter. Today we would like to share three goals with you: have fun, meet interesting people and learn things, because if we learn something, the day has already been worth it.” So Rancio enters the show No puede SER every day from Monday to Thursday, “one Space of freedom that Cadena SER Andalucía has given us, in which we engage in an entertaining way with subjects that have no reason to be there,” says the journalist, who goes even further when trying to explain the content explain that his show is based on: “We simply make the show that we would like to hear.”
Muñoz speaks in the plural because he found himself on the radio in the company of the comedian and monologue Juan Amodeo (1.1 million Instagram followers) and the journalists Luis Márquez and Rocío Vicente from the audiovisual sector, a quartet that represents the Cadena SER has connected Andalusia with new audiences, a part of society that separated itself from the previous radio waves: the followers of No Podemos SER are mostly young people between 18 and 35 years old who have approached the radio program through social networks and digital platforms. La Cámara de los Balones, the most listened to program in its slot in Andalusia, has more than 30,000 monthly downloads and No puede SER an average of 12,000.
“Radio is very Martian, when it's done it seems like no one can hear you, you're alone in a studio talking to no one knows who. But if I suddenly say something funny live and it works, my phone lights up 17 times with notifications from WhatsApp or about us being mentioned on social media. It's crazy. This is the best EGM there is,” reflects Muñoz.
Within this space of freedom that has allowed him to reinterpret the most classic traditions and transform them into discourses of modernity, Julio Muñoz is aware of his red lines: “Treat each topic with humor but without leaving victims behind.” And he explains: “For me it is a pride to be able to talk to a child who suffers from achondroplasia, dying of laughter and making jokes, and the next day to receive congratulations from the Achondroplasia Association of Andalusia.” To be funny you don't have to be funny to anyone insult, that is the limit of humor.
The journalist also assures that radio has become the vehicle that connects his followers with his novels. Julio Muñoz Rancio became a publishing phenomenon since he published “The Murderer of Regañá” in 2012, the first title in a trilogy that began with “The Crime of Palodú” and “The Prisoner of Seville East”, a mixture of humor and crime novel with the Police couple in the lead role, concludes Jiménez and Villanueva, who, despite a hilarious review of the most established local clichés, “have the most sales in Barcelona,” says the author.
To date there are 14 titles in black and white if we add the novel that has just been published and represents a record change: True Crime (El Paseo Editorial), a thriller in which the perfect crime, true television crime and such surprising twists appear as well as documented real-life cases: “It was a whim that the publishers allowed me to do it because I was able to sell many of the previous books,” laughs Muñoz. This crime novel gives its author the most journalistic profile, since it is a work of fiction created after his time as a screenwriter for a television production company that prepared a series of documentaries about criminals – drugs, murderers, high-profile thieves… – who shamelessly confess their crimes on camera.
“I am not the best crime novelist in this country, but my material is unique, first-hand,” he explains, who also boasts of having recruited “many non-readers” with his novels: For me, another great prize is that “ A father tells me at a book signing that he got his children to read thanks to my books.
And at the center of everything continues to be social networks, “without a doubt the most epicentric of everything I do” and what gives harmony to this disaster drawer that houses the unbridled creativity of Julio Muñoz: wherever there is Andalusism, humor and there is a story saying he will find this journalist: “I do a lot of things, there are people who tell me it's too crazy, but I don't live it that way: I only deal with what I think “I can make up for it.” he admits.
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