Enric Canals, creator of the first TV3 and audiovisual producer, dies.
The renowned journalist was part of the founding team of the television
BarcelonaThe journalist and audiovisual producer Enric Canals i Cussó passed away this Saturday, at the age of 73. Canals, who suffered from cancer, was one of the founding members of TV3, where he held positions of maximum responsibility, first as head of programming and then as director of the channel between 1984 and 1989.
Previously, he had passed through The Country, he Barcelona Diary and Radio Barcelona. It was at this station that Canals caught the attention of Alfons Quintà, who would eventually become the explosive first director of TV3, making him his second-in-command, both at the radio station and, later, at the newspaper's Catalan branch. The CountryQuintà clashed with the Prisa establishment and ended up convincing Jordi Pujol that his project for a non-folkloric Catalan regional television channel with national ambitions was the best. He obtained the leadership of TV3 and brought Canals on board to also serve as his trusted deputy. But Quintà's dictatorial style and thirst for power forced him to back down from the project: the station's general director, Joan Granados, dismissed him and proposed that Canals take over. "From now on, on television, rubber 2," the ousted journalist told Canals, aiming to dynamite the establishment from within. But the new director was unwilling to boycott the project. The squire no longer wanted to be a subjugated figure. Quintà would end up becoming one of TV3's most furious critics. And he would embark on a destructive spiral that culminated in 2016 with the murder of his partner, before committing suicide.
But that dramatic end is still many years away, and Canals is leading this phase of rapid expansion for TV3, breaking RTVE's monopoly, freeing it from the ties Canals sought to impose. And he does so to the despair of the state-owned broadcaster's general manager, José María Calviño, that is, without falling into the vices of anthropological television channels focused solely on expressions of popular culture. This is a channel that looks at the world from Catalonia and that looks the other way with a Spanish Television with its ossified structure, which allows it to systematically win the game of agility.
Not only did the state's monopolistic desires have to be overcome. There were also those, from Catalonia, who were putting spokes in the wheels. In the book Objetivo TV3, Canals explained how the preparation of the channel's first test broadcast, which was a success that paralyzed the country, caused concern among some of the political parties represented on the Corporation's governing council: "We had so many enemies that no one should know what was happening and what all of us wanted. of ideas but also needed someone to execute and fix their delusions.
Canals' mandate extended until May 1989. One of his last battles, alongside Granados, was to fight for the existence of Channel 33, which the State was putting every administrative problem imaginable to prevent it from going ahead. He was replaced by Jaume Ferrús, another of the architects of the first TV3, first as the technical brain of the entire infrastructure of the channel, and later as director. In this management structure of the Corporation in the 80s and early 90s, there is another element worth highlighting: both Canals and Ferrús came from from the political left. This was a fact that Joan Granados likes to claim, because it highlights his role in acting as a dam against the part of Pujolism—fundamentally, the circle of Lluís Prenafeta and the so-called business sector—that wanted to exploit the public channel to their advantage.
After his time at Televisió de Catalunya, Canals directed the newspaper The Observer –Pujolism's attempt to confront The Vanguard with a newspaper in Spanish after the realization thatToday did not succeed with this purpose - and founded the production company Mercurio. With Mercurio he dedicated himself to the production of television programs and series, mainly documentary and historical content. He was a member of the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia, director general of broadcasting for the Generalitat from 1997 to 2001 and delegate in Catalonia for the Vocento group.
Among his television series and programs are Do you remember?, The days that changed our lives, This time, that country, That 1898, In the shadow of the Great War either ACR Classification., with which he won the 1996 Òmnium Cultural Award for best television program. This program was based on reports by the Francoist police on figures and institutions opposed to the dictatorship.
This series was later translated into a book. Under Control (ACR), written with Ramon Perelló. Canals is also the author of the books Do you remember..? (Sentimental Chronicle), written with Joaquim Roglan; That 98, with Jordi Pujol's former press chief, Jesús Conte; and Informers. Franco's JusticeIn the awards section, in 2013 he also won the Godó Prize for reporting and journalistic essay for the work 'Pujol Catalunya'. In 2012 he co-produced the film The perfect stranger, directed by Toni Bestard.
