The nineties were strange years. Spain showed itself to the world. The television monopoly disappeared, and what was meant to be eye-opening for a populace of pitchers and tambourines eventually became a window onto the everyday. The mamachicho was dancing in the background on the TV. The one baptized as Telebasura took over the cathode tube and then he appeared: Father Apeles (Barcelona, 56 years old). A Roman-collared priest dotting the entire television grid, voicing his opinions among the silicon-saturated gathering, subordinate collaborators, singers like Ramoncín and seers like Aramís Fuster. A controversial priest with replies full of cynicism has become Spain’s most famous priest. Today Father Apeles – José Apeles Santolaria de Puey y Cruells – lives in Rome, “very close to the Vatican”, draws on the savings of the time and has become a bookworm. EL PAÍS contacted him. How could this Spain, in the middle of the second or third revelation, allow a priest to take over television? Apelles is the only one who knows the secret of his success.
Before becoming a priest, 12-year-old boy Apeles was addicted to radio broadcasts. “I loved Encarna Sanchez. She was demagogic, ignorant… but she had a hypnotic power. One summer his deputy, Julia Bustamante, was there and I called to give my opinion on the war in Lebanon. From then on, they invited me to go to Radio Miramar,” he recalls. After Miramar Radio came other radios. He was ordained a priest in Italy and, already disguised as a priest, appeared in Catalan on TV3 or La 2 programs. “Joan Ramon Mainat saw me in a debate and asked Xavier Sardà to invite me to La Ventana on Cadena SER. Then Sardà was offered to present the debate program Moros y Cristianos on Telecinco. I was studying at the diplomatic school at the time and used to take the subway to class every day. On a Saturday I performed in Moros y Cristianos and on Monday all of Spain knew me. I couldn’t take the subway anymore,” he recalls. “You convinced me to present my own program: Appointment with Apeles together with Rocío Carrasco. There was an error. I must have done a program similar to Buenafuente, but we ended up doing the semáforo where people came to sing or do bizarre things,” he laments.
When he worked in television, he had no religious mission, he belonged to no diocese and he was – and still is – a priest with no dependence on or work in the Church. “The Spanish Bishops’ Conference issued a note saying that I do not represent the Church. You were right, I was never a spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference, I just represented myself.” There were months when Apeles appeared on television six days a week, co-hosting the Telecupón with Carmen Sevilla.
From one day to the next they stopped calling him. “I don’t fit into certain formats. They tell me to go back to TV, but I’m not comfortable with heart shows with fights and screams. I like provocation and controversy. TV is now asking of me what I can’t give it, and I’m asking of TV what it won’t give me,” he confesses. He made a lot of money and allowed him to study liberal arts, political science, criminology, private detective agency, geography, history, he’s a military captain… and more careers than he’ll ever aspire to. The phone stopped ringing at the same time Apeles was left without family in Barcelona. After that he returned to Italy. “It was in Ferrara that I worked for the Church for the first time as Archbishop’s Chancellor and in the Historical Archives. Two years ago I moved to Rome and I’m going to study”. Apeles leads a simple life, living at home, studying and living on his savings. Like mere mortals, he also accumulates problems: “I am depressed in an endogenous way. There was a time when I took a lot of sleeping pills. When they subsided, he mixed them with whiskey so he could sleep. I was hooked and broken, but I’m fine now.”
Would you return to Spain? “I’m not interested. I’m tired of leaving Barcelona. I’m Catalan, I have the title of Catalan teacher and I’m a Catalanist because I like the culture and the language, but it’s backward that Catalonia is a different nation after 500 years which, moreover, would not have a majority of Catalan speakers. Independence makes us small and sterile, and that is only due to the desire of some politicians who want to uplift people’s feelings about staying in power,” he says.
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Religious rites are always celebrated in private and he admits he misses the media. “Although I can’t go out on a reality show or a heart show at any price either.” He knows he’s not a traditional priest. “Despite what it may seem, I’m not someone who has a lot of relationships with people. I don’t like to talk too much, I don’t have the patience to put up with people. I wouldn’t have become a priest at all,” he confesses.
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