I imagine that at this time the Reig cigarillos, the Stihl chainsaw, the Farho heaters, the Banesto account, Marina D’Or Ciudad de Vacaciones, the Consentino countertops, the Martinelli shoes, the Guijuelo hams, the Servirueda workshops will be gathered somewhere. , the Bocopa Wineries, the Talonotel checkbooks, the Osborne Winery Veteran, the Massey Ferguson tractors or the Facundo Pipes.
I imagine all the brands in a huddle chanting and loudly replicating their own songs: “Hot house. Hot, hot, little house with Farho. Hot winter, winter with Farho”, “What comfort, what comfort, with Fluchos shoes, what comfort”, “You will be my renting, only you my renting, Renting Leaseplan go”, “Facundo’s Chaskis come triumphing there, the Chaskis from Facundo there they come triumphing”, “Banesto is the sports bank, Banesto is the national top scorer”, “The coupon, every day an illusion, the coupon, every day an illusion”, “Coronita, uh, fresh, uh”. Suddenly, the Mexican corrido will sound to welcome Massey Ferguson, who comes from afar, or Paquito el Chocolatero to welcome the Renault Range of commercial vehicles.
I imagine that all these brands will be gathered in Madrid, in a radio studio in front of several dropped microphones with black foam. Today in Madrid it rains, as it surely did when Pepe Domingo Castaño played as a child in the cobblestone square of Padrón (A Coruña) that now bears his name. So I suppose that, since it is raining, from time to time someone will say out loud “chafunnng”, simulating the splash of water that Pepe Domingo used to mention Marina D’Or Resort Town. “Chafunnng,” someone will say and the rest of the brands will smile. Afterwards they will smoke a cigar, although that is no longer popular, and they will tell stories about so many afternoons in ‘Carrusel Deportivo’ and ‘Tiempo de Juego’ being absolute protagonists, almost as much as the goals, even more so. Then they will go with their logos in tow back to the conventional and bland wedges, feeling more empty, but above all less happy.
Pepe Domingo fought throughout his career for advertising to be an important part of the radio, much more than a pause or a place that had to be passed through so that money would enter the company, and for this, he said, it was essential to share it. . I shared the advertising with the listeners who sat in the studio and actively participated in the composition of the ads, I shared it with the announcers displaced in the stadiums who inserted it into their narratives, and I also shared it with the listeners who listened to us from our homes. or cars those addictive jingles that we sang even when the transistor turned off. The secret of his success was as simple and at the same time as complicated as that: he made you participate in what he was telling and what was happening. When the last burst of Carrusel Deportivo’s eternal tune sounded, his verses would arrive, his characteristic “Hello, hello!”, and you immediately felt in a familiar place.
Pepe Domingo Cataño was an entertainer and patriarch, and although perhaps that was not the destiny he sought when he began in journalism, it was one that gave him and us listeners irreproachable pleasure. The spectacle of football seemed and now seems difficult without his elongation of words, his chants and his bitingness. He turned the brands into friends and companions, while he transformed himself, perhaps unintentionally, into his own registered trademark: that of Pepe Domingo Castaño.
Until the words run out, he said. But how are you going to run out of words when you have created immortal slogans.
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