Jesús Calleja will become the first non-astronaut Spaniard to go into space. The project, the last of the Paolo Vasile era, was described by the Italian as his “last firework” before leaving the post of CEO of Mediaset España. “Since a large part of my professional life has been devoted to things to which others react with ‘You’re crazy’, this will be my last chance for television activities in Spain,” Vasile explained this Thursday to a small group of journalists at Mediaset’s offices in Madrid. For this adventure, the Spanish communications group has teamed up with its usual dance partner in the world of platforms, Amazon Prime Video. The project’s television details have yet to be finalized, but the intention is to produce three specials, telling the story before, during and after the voyage, which will be shown on Prime Video worldwide. For its part, Mediaset will be responsible for issuing the 10-15 minutes that the space journey will last.
For the origins of Calleja’s new adventure you need to travel to November 2020 and Rome, a few days away and a place where Vasile had Covid. He came up with this idea to pay off a debt he owed to the Leonese Communicator while also giving him an award. “The guilt was that I felt like I cut off his wings for telling him when we first met after buying Cuatro that I didn’t want him to keep climbing and risking damage. The award is because he allowed himself to be taken by the hand and directed to other types of exploration, he allowed himself to be guided,” explains the managing director. Prime Video soon came into the equation, which Vasile saw as his natural partner after years of work and collaboration. Negotiations were conducted without the knowledge of Planeta Calleja’s moderator, and they did not share the news with him until nine months later. “It was a very strange date, they told me they wanted to see me but they didn’t tell me anything… The truth is that when I was presenting Survivors I already saw myself in a bikini,” Calleja joked.
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The process of getting the adventurer into space wasn’t easy. The waiting list to take part in these trips is very long, and the aerospace company Blue Origin – founded like Amazon by tycoon Jeff Bezos and an essential third leg for this odyssey to become a reality – takes many factors into account when selecting candidates for the will take part in each flight, only six at a time. There is also no exact date for the trip, although they expect it to take place within 12 to 14 months, in late 2023 or early 2024. “It is a project that illustrates very well this stage that we have built to make a different television with Mediaset,” said Ricardo Carbonero, Head of Content at Amazon Prime Video Spain, noting that this is an unprecedented project in the world. For the three audiovisual pieces planned, Calleja and his team will go to the United States to interview aerospace experts while recognizing all the Spanish knowledge and talent working in the field.
More than just a TV show, Vasile sees this project as “a great communication event”. “It’s not just any program,” he notes. He also did not detail the budget for this adventure or the price of the space ticket. “I’m not sure I can say that.” Carbonero explains that these are not banknotes that are commercially available, but are adapted to the characteristics of each candidate. “In terms of cost per minute, it will be the most expensive thing we’ve done in our lives, but it’s a project that goes further, it’s a communication project,” Vasile continues.
For Jesús Calleja, this will be the culmination of a childhood dream when the noises he was making as if he were in outer space scared his mother and brought him to a psychiatrist. “He told me to stop messing around that I was causing a lot of trouble for my parents. But how was I supposed to explain to him that I lived in space?” he recalls now as he sees his childhood dream come true.
He will be the third Spaniard in history to go into space, followed only by astronauts Pedro Duque and Miguel López-Alegría. “A few days ago I had dinner with the two new astronauts from León and I couldn’t tell them anything, I don’t know how I managed not to tell them,” says the presenter, who happens to share his place of birth with Pablo Álvarez and Sara García, the two Spaniards recently selected by the European Space Agency.
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