Josep Pedrerol (Barcelona, 60 years old) is living these days with the nerves of going back to school. It is not just any return. After 13 years at Atresmedia, El chiringuito has moved to the house across the street, to Mediaset. Last Thursday, the program’s newsroom was already operating at full capacity to prepare a return that feels like a premiere, because El chiringuito will still be El chiringuito as always, but with different details. The most important of all: now it airs from Monday to Thursday on Energy (23:45) and on Sundays at midnight on Cuatro (with reruns from Monday to Friday at 8:15 in the morning also on Cuatro). This Monday, with La Liga, a format that still generates buzz returns. After this interview, Pedrerol enters his new set and invites the journalist to step on his grass, uncut, and to sit on the panelists’ bench. It smells new. Pedrerol confesses that one more week wouldn’t have hurt. But football doesn’t wait.
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Question. How have the days leading up to this been?
Answer. The reception, fantastic. The preparations, crazy. It’s between excitement and fear, because a lot of things are missing, we’re in a big hurry, but the house is working a lot and they are collaborating incredibly. It’s been fun, but with some stress. Exciting would be the word. I was looking forward to getting emotional, the tingling feeling.
Q. Do you feel more responsibility because of being one of the TV signings of the summer?
A. Yes, but it’s for me and not disappointing those who have believed in us in this house. The people who watch us already know who we are, on Monday they will see that the family is here. There’s still a bit of confusion and people don’t yet know exactly where to watch us. We’ll have to fight for people to find their place.
Q. What news can you share with us?
A. I can reveal that on Tuesday we will have an interview that will be a world exclusive and that I haven’t even told Mediaset about. On Monday we will start with, “hey, here we are, Mediaset, excited”… We change some theme music, the presentation, the bench-style chairs, the big screens behind, but we go straight to the news, and on Tuesday, the exclusive. Because in the end we are the same, we’ve just changed channels.
⌛️ TIC-TAC, TIC-TAC… @elchiringuitotv IS ABOUT TO START!
— El Chiringuito TV (@elchiringuitotv) August 13, 2026
📺 This Monday, August 17, at midnight on ENERGY. pic.twitter.com/MDWlfmLuma
Q. You said at a press conference that you already had the intuition that your cycle at Atresmedia was ending. What happened?
A. Not a cycle, I don’t know… I have worked at all the TV stations, I was at Canal+, at TVE, at Atresmedia, and Mediaset was a pending subject. I was excited. It’s not that a cycle had ended or that I was exhausted at Atresmedia, these are moments when you want change to come. Look, Luis del Olmo was my absolute reference in radio. My family had a small electronics company, and when I was 12 years old I helped make headphones. Luis del Olmo was heard there all the time, and I said, someday I will work in radio. And I managed to work with Luis del Olmo at Punto Radio. Then life took me to television, which I didn’t want at all, the loss of privacy and exposure didn’t appeal to me at all. But I started at Canal+, which was a coded channel and I thought, few will see me, and I ended up doing El día después with Michael Robinson, and until I got here. Luis del Olmo used to say: the day I’m not nervous before starting a program, that day I’ll have to quit. And that happens to me, I have recovered that nervousness, that butterfly in the stomach.
Q. You said there were more offers, two very strong ones. Why did you choose Mediaset?
A. I talked with two other companies, one of them made a very fun proposal. But I told them I had had a meeting with Mediaset and it was a priority.
Q. Mediaset is not exactly booming right now. Was that something you took into account in your decision?
A. No, I saw it as Mediaset being in a process of change, trying things out. It’s very good to try in any area of life. Cuatro works very well and we will be on Cuatro, Energy works very well and we will be on Energy, and we wish the best to Telecinco, which will improve. These are processes, a roller coaster, you’re up, down, the important thing is to stay up. This house is convinced that the situation at Telecinco will be reversed. I see excitement in those in charge. I am part of that morale boost to Mediaset. And I have noticed in people, presenters, technicians, that they say how great it is that we come.
Q. When El chiringuito has been compared to Sálvame, did you take it as a compliment or an insult?
A. They said it as an insult, and I usually say that we started three months before Sálvame, in any case they copied us. Comparisons have never scared me nor are we here to despise anyone. That they said it was the Sálvame of football didn’t seem… I ignore the criticism. I am interested and listen to criticism, but not those with bad intentions. Now political programs are almost all Chiringuitos. So El chiringuito was not a bad idea. Actually, we haven’t invented anything, it’s a debate. But it’s a debate that is a Barça-Madrid every day, we pit culés against madridistas. It’s the passion of football. And what is football if we take away the passion? That said, with respect, we talk about what players do on the field, not what they do off it.
Q. What does your program have to have escaped television wear and tear and that even in 2026 its channel move has been one of the summer’s TV news?
A. The demand, that we all have and I first. We play for Madrid or Barça, and for that you have to have a special strength and mentality. We can’t go out to draw a match. Negligence, apathy makes me very nervous, you have to go out to win every match, we want to win the Champions. Not many programs last so many years on television. Every day we innovate, we are dissatisfied, we are insatiable, we like to grow, improve, create new things.
Q. Has the program changed over these years?
A. I think so, it’s more for all audiences. I think El chiringuito is a children’s program. It is followed by kids aged 10-12, on TikTok we have 10 million followers, and we will also repeat it in the morning, kids watch the program with breakfast. The characters are very cartoon-like, Tomás Roncero could be part of a comic. A comic could work. Or El Chiringuito Kids (laughs).
Negligence, apathy makes me very nervous. Not many programs last so many years on television
Q. And have you changed with the program?
A. I suppose so, especially in not hurting. Now that we are in a world with so much toxicity and so much bad vibe with social networks, I try to make the program much less of that. Before the discussions had a tone that would not be allowed now. Now it’s lighter, we debate without tension. In that we have evolved, or at least I have, maybe because of age, which makes me realize the things that really matter. The advantage of our schedule is that you are alone with the viewer. At noon it’s a different vibe, they watch you while they are eating, pass me the bread… At noon you are heard, at night you are listened to.
Q. How much of a character is the Pedrerol we see on television?
A. TV turns the person into a character. When they started imitating me the character appeared. I didn’t even know I was imitable, I didn’t know I had anything special. I am just as I am, one can’t be an actor for so long. I should be more of an actor. There are presenters who are angry and hide it. It shows too much on me. At this point I’m not going to avoid it anymore. It’s a pending subject I have, that a late video error, an unprepared image doesn’t affect me…
Q. You can’t manage to hide your anger…
Q. I can’t, no, no… But surely people value that we are like this, that we show ourselves as we are. And we also come to a TV set to be for two and a half hours and depending on what has happened in your life, the bills, what’s going on with the construction… That affects us. Changing now… I can’t promise.
Q. And football, how has it changed?
A. It had a downturn with the pandemic, people lost interest in football and it took us quite a while to recover it. I miss being closer to the footballers, each player has their own social networks and transmits what they want, clubs almost do propaganda because they give you the images that interest them… There is less closeness between journalist and footballer. In the end the important thing is to know what happens inside the locker room, and if Madrid has lost, what Mourinho told Vinicius, and they won’t say that in a press conference or an interview, you have to get that yourself, and we have achieved that with this team of journalists.
There are presenters who are angry and hide it. It shows too much on me
Q. Does women’s football still not provide content for the program?
A. It hasn’t reached this level, it’s starting in stadiums, in live TV audience, but it’s coming. The nice thing is that a girl can now have a female footballer as an idol. That was unthinkable a few years ago. The progress has been huge, but the Barça-Madrid controversy hasn’t happened, which is the essence of Chiringuito. But women’s football is incredible, I didn’t imagine that evolution would be so fast.
Q. What do you expect from this League?
A. Madrid clearly needs a change of helm, and Mourinho will provide it. I am a big fan of Mourinho and I think he is a fantastic element for Madrid, the players see him and stand at attention, and Madrid needed that. And Barça is at a maturity point of a team that plays very well, but as Flick said, to win the Champions you need something more, you have to strengthen some position to be competitive in Europe, because in Spain they win leagues. And Atleti is at that point of not wanting to bother, never saying they want to win the League, so the expectation is less than what can be achieved. I miss Atleti saying, “let’s go for the League.” They have the team to do it.
Q. Do you see yourself hosting a non-sports program?
A. I have thought about it, and I have a program in mind that I can’t say.
Q. But what kind?
A. Social politics, people’s concerns, a very wild, very savage debate. A wilder Chiringuito, with more people… But now we have to make the people who watched us before watch us now, and those who are on Energy watching CSI stay with us, and the same on Cuatro after Iker.
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