Happy New Year 2026, 1989 and 1975

That is why, in 2025, I decided to say goodbye to it by watching the chimes on the YouTube channel of the writer Javier Santamarta, who broadcast them from the Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial. I had also just seen Santiago Segura want to buy (what a laugh, what a pleasure) the first advertisement of the year on La 1 (oh, how funny) with a piggy bank (we’re pissing ourselves) to promote the premiere of his next film, Torrente Presidente, the screenplay of which was largely prepared, I’m afraid, by the UCO.

With Pedroche, moreover, dedicating her dress, which looked like a girl who fell from the balcony of the eighth floor and having crossed all the clotheslines of the building taking her laundry with her, to the fight against cancer. And to those of Van Gogh’s ear, become young, at fifty years old, with Amaia Montero wrapped in the Nordic as if he had just rolled out of bed and started singing. I needed, to sympathize with my drama, a little style, good taste, glamor. A little more fabric, less gratuitous transparency, fewer white sneakers with a tuxedo to play the rebel in a poorly managed gerontolean adolescence, fewer fifty-year-olds looking like they’re giving their all in the world of pop.

How we miss those chimes with Ana Obregón and Ramón García in a Spanish cape (thank you, Santamarta, for that), explaining with blessed patience what the neighborhoods are, what the chime is, what the really good chimes are.

So I ate the grapes (jelly beans, I admit) connected to YouTube, betraying the traditional media because they demanded it. Of course, then I tuned into regular TV channels to watch the Christmas specials, dressed for the occasion: Grinch pajamas, warm socks with bells, noisemakers and chocolates (and don’t forget no attitude).

The serious things have begun, I don’t want to lie to you. I’m almost falling asleep (and you’re missing this summary) because on RTVE’s La 1 they decided it was a good idea to take all their familiar faces, put them in front of a microphone, tell them to act intense (a bit USA for Africa in 85, Vallecas version) and hit autotune while they sing things like “there are a thousand memories that since we were children have made us who we are”, “we share an illusion, the one you have and want to realize” or “That’s how it is in a world that’s always spinning.”

I want to think it’s a matter of laziness combined with artificial intelligence (what an invention Suno is) and that we didn’t together pay someone’s dispirited cousin with a street organ to play emotional music for a bad second grade homework assignment. Then, I admit, I was hypnotized by the squeaking (as the moderns say) and I remained glued to the screen: for a moment I thought we were entering 2001 when Amaral came out to sing. But then Luz Casal appeared and I thought it was 1995.

Then Marta Sánchez and I congratulated my loved ones on WhatsApp in 1986 and, When Victor Manuel appeared, I celebrated the entry into 1976 and the end of the dictatorship. Then Carlos Baute played, who is the one who sang with Marta Sánchez, from 1986, that of Colgando en tus manos, from 2008 or 2009, that is to say. He is to Marta Sánchez what the one with the hat is to Amaral: the other.

We arrived at the end of the 90s thanks to Café Quijano and in the middle came people I don’t know, but I also don’t know those who were so talkative. But now is not the time to stand up and stare, as Threshold would say. Let’s leave it at that: this time travel, without the need for García fluid or anachronopete, is not paid. Next year they can repeat the same program, which will not be noticed.