Artur Albarran, former journalist and television presenter, has died
“A, the little drama, the horror” was the famous phrase in his golden years of television, in the 1990s. The last time he appeared on screen was in 2001, in front of “Chained”. notable reports and court cases
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Former journalist and television presenter Artur Albarran has died, CNN Portugal confirmed. At the age of 69, he had been battling cancer for several years.
The three channel man
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His journey in journalism, after youth experiences in Mozambique, where he was born, took place with his arrival in Portugal, at the age of 18. Artur Albarran is part of Rádio Clube Português, accompanied by names that are now references in the country, such as Joaquim Furtado or Júlio Isidro.
But it is the 1980s, after a period abroad in which he collaborates with the BBC, that consolidates Artur Albarran’s career in journalism, when he joins RTP, in the founding team of the program “Grande Reportagem”, where he investigates the disaster in Camarate. that killed Sá Carneiro and Adelino Amaro da Costa. In the early 1990s, he stood out as an envoy to the Gulf War and the conflict in Somalia on public television.
In 1993, he became director of O Século Ilustrado. But, with the difficulties in the written press, it would be the creation of private televisions that would give it great prominence among the public. That same year, he moved to TVI, shortly after the channel was founded, as an information presenter. He even has a program under his own name.
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Media Capital, which owns TVI, has already expressed its “deep regret”, recalling that it presented the “main newspaper of the station, alongside Bárbara Guimarães and Sofia Carvalho”. “TV remembers him as a daring professional, who allows for a close relationship with the public. His programs, as well as the reports he made as a special envoy to the Gulf War, go down in the history of Portuguese television”, reacted the company, which also owns CNN Portugal.
But it would be an invitation from SIC, in 1996, to make him abandon journalism and move to the entertainment side, with famous programs at the time such as “A Cadeira do Poder”, “Acorrentados” or “Real Images”. In the latter, the latter ends up making famous the phrase that everyone associates with it: “the tragedy, the drama, the horror”.
The media career for another moment still stands out: the smile in the advertisement for Pepsodent, 1986, with a “cachet” record according to the press at the time: 20 thousand contos.
Troubled relationship with justice
Artur Albarran’s relationship with justice has always been quite troubled. After the 1974 revolution, he joined the Revolutionary Party of the Proletariat. The call would have to dictate the flight to France, after the operation in the Revolutionary Brigades process. The escape then takes him to the United Kingdom, where he collaborates with the BBC, before returning to Portugal in 1980.
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At the end of the 1990s, he accepted the challenge of a group of North American businessmen and politicians – ex by the former ambassador to Portugal and made-director of the CIA, Frank Carlucci, with whom he would have made friends with coverage on the embassy robbery. of Spain in 1975 – to lead its business in the country.
He becomes president of the real estate holding company EuroAmer. It is precisely the receipt of this company that dictates an investigation by the Public Ministry, with Artur Albarran appointed in 2005 as a suspect of money laundering and forgery of documents – suspicions that justify his arrest. But there are no charges and the case just dropped.
The businessman is even accused, in this context, of having evaded the tax authorities in 16 million euros, ending up acquitted.
Two marriages and the long fight with cancer
In recent years, also in justice of the controversies with, Artur Albarran lived between Angola and South Africa.
He is a man of several amorous and controversial relationships. The German Lisa Hardy, with whom she had two daughters, even accuses Artur Albarran of domestic violence, leading to a strong dispute with him over the custody of the minors. His marriage to chef Sandra Nobre, with whom he had another girl, continued until his death, despite successive reports of crises.
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The former cancer diagnosis enters the journalist’s life in 2011, advancing towards treatment for multiple myeloma, a rare type of cancer. But eight years later, Albarran announces on social media that he is once again dealing with an illness, undergoing his second bone marrow transplant. Last November, he was taken urgently to the Hospital de São Francisco Xavier.
Months earlier, he had been admitted to the intensive care unit at Amadora-Sintra hospital due to infection with covid-19, penalized by his oncological condition. Also meningitis takes him to the hospital at the same time.