The TV Academy honors its founders by awarding them the Extraordinary Talent Award

The Board of Directors unanimously approves granting this award to the professionals who created and promoted the Institution that is now celebrating its 20th anniversary.

The Board of Directors of the Television Academy has unanimously decided to grant the Extraordinary Talent Award to the first founders of the Institution. Its president, Manuel Campo Vidal, has pointed out that "the current Board of Directors wanted to honor the initiative of creating the Television Academy 20 years ago by some professionals who understood the need to have an Institution that defended the dignity of our work and who invited many of us to join it."

A total of twenty-two media professionals signed the founding act of the Academy of Television Sciences and Arts of Spain before a notary on January 28, 1997 in a deed headed by Ramón del Corral. They were joined by up to 164 founding members who each disbursed 100,000 pesetas of the time to provide assets to the Institution that was born. Some of those twenty-two first signatories, including Jesús Hermida, Antonio Mercero, Isabel Gemio, Rafael Ansón and Mikel Lejarza, among others, were members of the first board of directors along with leading professionals such as Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, Concha Velasco, Victoria Prego, Manuel Martín Ferrand, Ricardo Visedo, Olga viza or Claudio Biern.

The list of the first signatories plus the members of the first Board of Directors that promoted the Academy is as follows: Ramón del Corral, Ricardo Visedo, Isabel Gemio, Jesús Hermida, Rafael Ansón, Jorge Sánchez Gallo, Mikel Lejarza, Valerio Lazarov, Pedro Piqueras, Miguel Martín García, Antonio Mercero, Jorge del Corral, Miguel Ángel Gozalo, Miguel Ángel Toledano, Pedro Erquicia, Manuel Fernández Velasco, Lorenzo Díaz, Ramón Pradera, José Secundino Fernández-Velasco, Matías Prats, Olga Viza, Jorque Arqué, Pepe Navarro, Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, Manuel Martín Ferrand, Victoria Prego, Concha Velasco, Claudio Biern, Ignacio Salas, Isabel Raventós, José María Avendaño, Carlos Rapallo and José Vilchez.

The award will be presented during the Talent Awards ceremony, which recognizes television professionals behind the cameras, on March 9.

20 years of history

Rafael Ansón, upon learning of this distinction, commented that "the Academy of Television Sciences and Arts was born so that there would be a neutral entity that could give criteria, establish awards and other initiatives that would affect the world of television. With that idea, we created a working group with representatives of the television networks that existed then: TVE, Antena 3, Telecinco and Canal+. The inspiration was the film academies, especially the American one."

Ricardo Visedo, for his part, acknowledges that "the idea was Rafael Ansón's and he communicated it to me and Moncho and Jorge del Corral. We agreed to speak with Jesús Hermida, then director of Antena 3, who proposed that they should also be responsible for Telecinco and TVE. Mikel Lejarza and Jorge Sánchez Gallo were invited. Afterwards we called a meeting at the Príncipe y Serrano restaurant to which different professionals attended. More than a hundred and From there came the first board that was in charge of formalizing the Institution. The first numbers were assigned to the promoter group, among which were Jesús Hermida, Valerio Lazarov, Mikel Lejarza, Jorge Sánchez Gallo, Rafael Ansón, Isabel Gemio and number 7, which is me.”

Mikel Lejarza comments that "Jesús Hermida called me and invited me to a meal with Jorge Sánchez Gallo and Valerio Lazarov. At that time I was General Director of Telecinco and he was in charge of Antena 3. He presented the idea of ​​creating an Academy to us. The four of us thought it was a great initiative and time has shown it. From there we started moving...I remember both Jesús and Valerio with great affection."

Olga Viza remembers that "Matías Prats did the 3:00 PM newscast on La 1 and I did the newscast on Antena 3. We had arranged to go to a meal with TV people on Serrano Street afterwards. We arrived at coffee time and were shocked to see all the greats of our television there. They immediately updated us on what was being proposed there. We were founders "to the desserts" and, of course, it seemed like a great idea.”

Lorenzo Díaz, finally, highlights that "a group of people linked to television came together and signed a document that has been as important in the culture of the media as our accession to the European Union. It was the birth of an Institution that has given splendor to television and has energized Spanish society."