When José Luis Zúñiga is asked what Diario LA RIOJA has meant in his life, he does not hesitate in his answer. “The newspaper has been everything to me,” he says. He says it without hesitation and his words are not exaggerated. Not in vain, … It has been the place he has worked for more than 45 years. “Forty-six, exactly,” she adds.
His beginnings at the newspaper date back to 1972. “Don Miguel Martínez-Zaporta gave me my first contract,” he remembers. That was the official starting point, but his ties with this editorial office go back even further in time. “By the time I signed that first contract, I had already distributed newspapers through the streets of Logroño with my bicycle,” he explains. “There were portals on Gran Vía where you left twelve copies, in the one next door another ten…”, he recalls.
His destiny seemed marked, not only because of his first steps as a delivery driver but because his family has always been closely linked to Diario LA RIOJA. “My grandfather Timoteo worked here as a linotype mechanic, as did my father, while my uncles Aníbal Zúñiga and Gregorio Ábalos were linotypists,” lists Zúñiga, who defines himself as a linotypist although the department in which he has carried out his work has had very different names. «Photocomposition, workshop, technical department…», he lists. In short, functions that do not have as much visibility as those of journalists, but that are just as important, or more, for the newspaper to be out on the streets every day.
Zúñiga remembers perfectly what his first day was like and how he has experienced all the technical evolution that the newsroom has gone through in those almost five decades that he has witnessed. He learned typing, said goodbye to the linotype machine and the rotary press and welcomed computers and color. “I have lived through the entire process,” he congratulates himself, but beyond that, his best words are directed toward people. Not in vain, during this trip to the past names come to mind such as Ángel Fernández, Marcelino, Luis Miguel Negrillos, José María Lope Toledo (the first director he met). José Blas or the journalists Ignacio Esarte and Esperanza Martínez-Zaporta. “We have lived very good moments,” he summarizes. “The worst thing has been saying goodbye to the colleagues who have left,” he laments.
In his opinion, Diario LA RIOJA “has meant a lot” to this autonomous community. “You would go to the street and people would tell you something and tell you ‘I read it in LA RIOJA,'” he certifies while ensuring that he remains faithful to the newspaper, even after his retirement. “I see the news on the mobile app and the next day I read it again on paper,” he says, stepping again “with great joy” into an editorial office that has been part of his life and that of his family for many decades. .
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