On 10 October 2026, Mari Carmen García Vela returned to Informe Semanal, 29 years after leaving the programme, for a one-off broadcast marking TVE’s 70th anniversary. La 1 and Canal 24 Horas carried the special, which was also available on RTVE Play.
The edition centred on TVE’s anniversary and García Vela’s place in the programme’s history. Her return gave the broadcast a human focus as it examined how Spanish television has changed.
The special aired before 28 October, when TVE will formally mark seven decades since regular broadcasts began in 1956. García Vela presented Informe Semanal for twelve years, connecting her directly to the programme’s coverage of Spain’s social and political change, including its major cultural shifts. RTVE says the programme has been on air for 53 years and remains one of Spanish public television’s defining long-running formats.
Born in Madrid in 1942, García Vela entered television at 19 after winning the Caras Nuevas contest and became one of TVE’s most recognisable on-screen figures.
Her first words to viewers had the feel of a reunion. García Vela acknowledged that facing the cameras again in the familiar studio had made her uneasy beforehand. She also made clear that the format still holds a strong professional and personal place in her life. In an RTVE interview, she called her years at Informe Semanal an “addiction” and her departure a kind of “withdrawal syndrome”. The words conveyed the emotional weight of her return.
The central report, titled 70 años viéndonos, traced television’s development from its pioneering black-and-white years to today’s complex broadcasting environment. Archive footage and testimonies from people connected to the medium shaped the 16-minute-and-one-second piece. It revisited programmes that entered the collective imagination and paid tribute to the early professionals who built the country’s audiovisual industry.
In the anniversary edition, García Vela argued that television can still offer a conversation with a name and a face, preserving a human dimension in an environment shaped by social networks and artificial intelligence. She also said journalistic credibility is evident when a journalist understands the subject and explains it with confidence.
Several contributions supplied the report’s human and historical weight. Mari Cruz Soriano discussed the first generation of television workers and their cultural influence on successive audiences. Alejandro Ibáñez recalled his father, Chicho Ibáñez Serrador, and the creative mark he left on formats that defined an era.
Jordi Hurtado offered a lighter perspective, reflecting on how viewers perceive the passage of time. Nicolás Albéndiz, who heads the TVE museum at the broadcaster’s production centre in Sant Cugat, displayed technical equipment that showed the broadcaster’s shift from early television technology to its current infrastructure.
Behind the presenters and celebrated formats were the technicians and production staff who kept the service operating across seven decades. The anniversary edition recognised their work. Its historical account focused on the people behind the cameras as well as the figures who appeared before them.
The programme also included a second report, “Las elecciones de Maricarmen”, about the social and political consequences of the eviction of Mari Carmen Abascal and her subsequent death. Alongside “70 años viéndonos”, it gave the special a contemporary public-affairs focus as well as an account of television history.
The edition fits a wider television-focused cultural agenda that recently included Gonzalo Suárez’s return to the small screen. García Vela’s case was more direct: she revisited the programme with which she remains professionally identified.
That choice gave Informe Semanal a strong anniversary structure. Personal memory ran alongside institutional history, while the broadcast linked technological change to both the people who worked through it and the audiences who watched. The broadcast is available on demand through RTVE Play with subtitles.
