Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo

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Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo
Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo in 2014.
Born
Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo Gayarre

April 30, 1932
Madrid, Spain
DiedMay 20, 2016 (aged 84)
Madrid, Spain
OccupationsReporter, athlete, agricultural technician
SpouseMarisol de Asumendi
ChildrenRodrigo, Sol, Íñigo
Parent(s)María Gayarre
Estanislao de la Quadra-Salcedo
AwardsCross of Charles III, Medal of Extremadura

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo y Gayarre (Madrid, April 30, 1932 – ibid., May 20, 2016)[1] was a Spanish reporter, cultural promoter and athlete specializing in throwing events.

His athletic career was marked by his adaptation of the Basque technique to the javelin throw, with which he set a new world record in 1956. Although his record was unjustly annulled, in an unprecedented decision, his contributions had a significant impact on the sport.

After his athletic career he worked for the Colombian government as an ethnobotanist in the Amazon region between 1961 and 1963. He later moved into journalism, working as a reporter for TVE, and later founding and directing various cultural programs such as Aventura 92 (Ruta Quetzal BBVA), which bear witness to his versatility and impact in different fields.

Family

One of Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo's ancestors was Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, who played a prominent role in some of the expeditions to the northern coast of California and in the talks with the English that brought an end to the so-called "Nootka Crisis."

He was the eldest of the six children of the marriage of Estanislao de la Quadra-Salcedo y Arrieta-Mascarúa (1908–1938) and María Gayarre y Galbete,[2] and was a cousin of Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo, as well as of José Javier de la Quadra-Salcedo y Miranda, Marquis of los Castillejos.

Although born in Madrid, he always identified himself as Basque-Navarrese "since the 1930s."[3]

In 1965 he married Marisol de Asumendi in Tokyo,[4] with whom he had three children: Rodrigo, Sol and Íñigo.

Athlete

When he was a child, at the age of five, his parents moved to Pamplona, the capital of Navarre. He studied at the Jesuit Colegio San Francisco Javier in Tudela (Navarre). He trained as an agricultural technician, but stood out more as an athlete.

For almost his entire sporting career he competed without a team, as an independent. In 1960 he joined the athletics section of Real Madrid C.F. During his sporting career he won a total of nine Spanish championships: six in the discus, two in the shot put and one in the hammer throw, in addition to several national records in the hammer and discus throws. He also took part in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games, representing Spain.

Javelin throw world record

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo broke the world javelin record using the "Spanish style" or "Erausquin" style, a technique adapted by Félix Erausquin from the Basque bar throw, with which he achieved a mark of 82.80 m in Madrid on September 21, 1956, far surpassing the Spanish record and also the world record of the time. However, after the record had been achieved, the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) changed the rules, banning the technique a posteriori on the grounds that it would have been "dangerous for the public" at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, since the throw was made while spinning. In addition, the IAAF proceeded to annul all the previous marks themselves, so the mark was not ratified, even though the rule change had been made after the throw. The excuse made no sense since, for example, the hammer throw is also performed while spinning, which is why a protective cage is used, and this could easily have been adapted to the javelin throw.

To get around the ban, Erausquin modified his technique by eliminating the spins prior to the throw, and even so, on March 12, 1957, he achieved the extraordinary mark of 89.17 meters, which surpassed the world record by 4 meters. But the IAAF was not willing to allow the feat, and since it no longer had the excuse of "danger to the public," it incredibly changed the rules once again, requiring that the tip of the javelin be pointed toward the throwing area at all times. These changes were applied retroactively, so that Miguel was officially stripped of all the records he had obtained.[5]

Despite the IAAF's unusual and unjust decisions, de la Quadra-Salcedo continued to demonstrate the effectiveness of the technique in unofficial exhibitions, where he even far exceeded his mark, reaching 112.30 m.[6]

Ethnobotanist

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo in the Amazon

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo began his first solo journey to this region in 1961 and, two years later, an invitation from the Colombian Anthropological Museum led him to undertake an ethnobotanical expedition to get to know some of the indigenous communities on the border between Brazil and Colombia.

During his Amazonian journey, Miguel navigated numerous tributaries, traveled through its jungles and lived with numerous tribes, trying to integrate as one more member of the group: hunting with their own spears, fishing with their arrows and taking part in their festivals and dances.

Thanks to his training as an agricultural technician, Miguel was able to appreciate the enormous diversity of Amazonian plant species, understand how they were used by the different tribes, and how the indigenous communities, through observation and experimentation, have come to recognize the nutritional, decorative, curative or toxic properties of a great number of species.

This adventure was documented by his photography and film crew, which always accompanied him, and was also recorded in his travel notebooks. In them he not only recounts his experiences with the Amazonian communities, but also carries out remarkable ethnographic work, transcribing a small vocabulary and carefully noting the customs, games and songs of the groups he lived with. He discovered, for example, that each tribe specialized in and monopolized the making of a certain type of product, which it then traded with neighboring tribes.

In 1977 he would return with his wife Marisol and with Rodrigo, his eldest son, to live with the Amazonian indigenous peoples for almost a year. Over the course of his travels he came to know thoroughly the customs of countless tribes, such as the Yagua, Shipibo, Ticuna, Huitoto, Ocaina, Bora, Waura or the Makú.

Journalist

On his return to Spain in 1963, he was hired by Televisión Española (TVE) as a reporter. In his first assignment he volunteered to cover the story of four Spanish Dominican nuns who had been murdered during the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. During his stay in Stanleyville he managed to film Katangese soldiers executing 300 Simba prisoners by firing squad. While filming, Miguel was caught and arrested by soldiers of the Armée Nationale. Sentenced to death, he was on the verge of being shot, and was saved at the last moment thanks to the intervention of some Cuban mercenaries. His report was broadcast by Televisión Española on the program "A toda plana", then directed by Enrique Meneses, and received excellent reviews.[7]

In 1972, the program "A toda plana" was replaced by a new weekly program titled "Datos para un informe", which soon gained great prestige. There he made "Una patrulla en la selva" (1972), about the Vietnam War; "Bengala, un millón de muertos" (1972), about the war between India and Pakistan; "Llegó Perón" (1972); "Chicanos" (1973), in which he interviewed the then governor of California, Ronald Reagan; "Caos en Managua" (1973), about the Nicaragua earthquake; "En el camino de la droga" (1973); "China como es" (1973), about Mao's China; "La guerra del Yom Kippur" (1973), about the Arab–Israeli war; or "Chile, toque de queda" (1973), about the coup d'état of September 11, 1973 in Chile, carried out by the Armed Forces of Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet, which was censored and was not broadcast in Spain until 1983.

In June 1974 "Datos para un informe" was replaced by "Los reporteros", which stayed on the air until 1976. The program featured a whole generation of journalists who left their mark on the history of TVE, allowing millions of Spaniards to get closer to countless places around the world. This is the period in which Miguel made some of his most memorable reports, such as the exclusive interview with the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie (1974) or the report on the Eritrean Liberation Front (1975), which won the International Television Prize at the 1976 Monte Carlo Festival.

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo then began to direct and present his own program, "Mundo en acción", a weekly program in which he retraced the journeys of the great explorers of all time: the route of Marco Polo, the discovery of the Amazon by Francisco de Orellana, the adventure of Ruy González de Clavijo as ambassador to the court of the Great Tamerlane in Samarkand, or the expedition of Roald Amundsen to the North Pole.

In 1979 "Mundo en acción" was replaced by the series "Españoles en el Pacífico", which recalled the feat of the great Spanish discoverers in the Pacific. The first edition was devoted to Pedro Fernández de Quirós, a Portuguese navigator in the service of the Spanish Crown who discovered the islands of the New Hebrides in Oceania. The second series reconstructed the voyage of Magellan and Elcano to the Moluccas, and was filmed in Tidore and Ternate.

Over the course of his professional career he had the opportunity to interview many important figures of the 20th century, such as the Dalai Lama, Salvador Allende, Indira Gandhi and Pablo Neruda, among others.

He also worked at La Actualidad Española, teaming up with Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente and the journalist César Pérez de Tudela.

Ruta Quetzal

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo in León during the 2010 Ruta Quetzal.

His last professional initiative was born in 1979, when he created the program Aventura 92, sponsored by Banesto, later called Ruta Quetzal, and which then bore the official name Ruta BBVA after its sponsor, the bank BBVA, until June 2016, when, after the death of Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, BBVA stopped sponsoring the Ruta.[8] It is a program that was declared of Universal Interest by UNESCO, and which consists of exchanges among young people from 58 countries so that they can take geographical, historical and environmental study trips through Latin America. So far, the program has awarded scholarships to more than 7,000 young people. The program has run uninterruptedly since 1979 and every June and July, for 45 days, brings together young people aged 16 and 17 on a round trip between Latin America and Spain.

Together with his children Rodrigo, Sol and Íñigo, De la Quadra-Salcedo created in 1994 the Fundación 2092 for the Organization of Geographical and Scientific Expeditions, relating to the future celebrations of the sixth centenary of the colonization of the Americas, which will take place in that year.

Television career

Death

Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo made his last journey at the age of 84 at his home in Madrid, surrounded by his loved ones, at 6:00 a.m. on Friday, May 20, 2016. Exactly the same day, 510 years after his admired Admiral Christopher Columbus (Valladolid, May 20, 1506), who died at the age of 55. His death was followed by various expressions of esteem in the media from former collaborators and fellow professionals.[9]

Awards and decorations

In 2000 he was awarded the National Prize of the Spanish Geographical Society. In 2005, the Association of Friends of Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo (AdAMIQUS) proposed that de la Quadra-Salcedo be awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord. Again, in 2009, and with the support of the Ruta Quetzal-BBVA organization, the award was requested once more. On this occasion, the award went to the city of Berlin, which was marking two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On May 26, 2009, the Government of Navarre awarded him the medal of the Cross of Charles III the Noble of Navarre[10] as public recognition of his contribution to the progress of Navarre and to the international projection of the Chartered Community.

In 2012 he was honored by the Junta de Extremadura with the Medal of Extremadura, the highest institutional distinction of the autonomous community.

In 2014 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation awarded him the rank of Commander by Number of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

In 2017 the #RecordandoAMiguel project was launched, an initiative of the Spanish Association of Athletics Statisticians (AEEA) to build a sculpture dedicated to Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo by Víctor Ochoa at the athletics track of the Complutense University of Madrid, located in the Ciudad Universitaria.[12]

References

  1. ↑ La Nueva España.
  2. ↑ Euskalnet.
  3. ↑ Fecha y lugar de nacimiento: «Soy vasco-navarro desde los años 30...» Archived June 10, 2016, at the Wayback Machine. Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo.
  4. ↑ Hemeroteca ABC.
  5. ↑ Author name, "Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, una vida de aventura. Pág 18., Rodrigo de la Quadra-Salcedo Asumendi, Ministry of Culture and Sport – Museo de América, November 28, 2019 – May 3, 2020
  6. ↑ Miguel De la Quadra Salcedo o cómo robarte un récord mundial «por la cara», Cómo robar un récord mundial.
  7. ↑ Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo, una vida de aventura. PDF-Pág 10, Museo de América.
  8. ↑ "BBVA dejará de patrocinar la Ruta BBVA al finalizar la expedición de 2016" (in español). Archived from the original on January 18, 2017. Retrieved January 16, 2017.
  9. ↑ Rosado, Juan Carlos (May 20, 2016). "Adiós al aventurero Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo" (in español). Retrieved May 24, 2016.
  10. ↑ De la Quadra-Salcedo galardonado con la la Cruz de Carlos III.
  11. ↑ Boletín Oficial del Estado
  12. ↑ "Escultura Miguel de la Quadra-Salcedo" (in español). verkami.com. Retrieved December 1, 2017.

Bibliography

  • Noticias genealógicas sobre los P. de Rivera y los Salcedo y varios de sus ascendientes y descendientes por líneas paterna y materna, y de otras casas vascongadas, by Antonio Pérez de Azagra, 1943.
  • La casa de Salcedo de Aranguren, by Javier Ybarra Bergé.
  • La casa de Urrutia de Avellaneda, by J. M.ª Urrutia y Llano; Bilbao, 1968.
  • El pájaro de la aventura, by Antonio Pérez Henares.

See also

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