Nacho Suriani

The journalist Ignacio Nacho Suriani died of a heart failure today. This is not going to make headlines anywhere but here, but I'm sure almost everybody in Rosario with the absolute minimum exposure to the news already knows Nacho is gone, much as it happened when Roberto Fontanarrosa passed away last month. (Each person walking into my office begins by anxiously asking, "Do you know already...?")

Suriani was 73 (he was turning 74 next Saturday) and, for decades, he'd been doing a daily radio show called Tempranísimo on Radio 2, from 6 to 9 AM. Many of us have, at one point or other in our lives, had breakfast before school, college or work listening to his raspy voice, to his feigned old-fashioned, "macho lady-killer"-type reflections on women (he called himself a feminist), to both the taunts and compliments he joyfully directed at his co-hostess Mirta Andrín, to the measured verbal attacks he used in conversations with politicians and the rest of the assorted scum of the city.

I can't say he was a good journalist (who's to say?), but he sure was something you couldn't miss. He was a part of the urban landscape, something we were accustomed to, even myself (I'm not a radio listener; I just want some voice to talk to me while I have breakfast), and his absense will be noted. Three hours in the morning without that familiar voice is too much.

In the media:

• Silencio de radio: murió Nacho Suriani
  
• Falleció el periodista Ignacio Suriani
• Murió el periodista Ignacio Suriani