Jesús Rodenas (simple, without an accent on the e) even makes fun of his shadow. The interview takes place in a Radio Castilla-La Mancha studio, where this young man, who turned 24 in August, arrived at the beginning of the year, on Monday, February 19, with a training contract under his arm. Since then, this blind joker and hard worker has been working as an editor for the public entity: he conducts interviews and news to write articles and read them live or on tape, depending on the moment.
He doesn’t have a guide dog “because I don’t like dogs.” and he is always accompanied by his white cane and his Braille display, a device that connects to the phone or computer, with a voice synthesis that allows it to interpret what the reader reads. He hears it at a speed that seems supersonic and he does not understand anything, but Jesus does not even flinch. “This is our way of hearing it and we are so used to it that we go faster and faster.”
He was born prematurely, at six months, and says that He experienced his own special “Bakalao Route”: a tour of the most popular nightclubs on the Carretera del Saler in Valencia in the 80s and first half of the 90s.
From the town of Barrax in Albacete, Jesús travelled and visited more hospitals in the three months since his birth than many people do in their entire lives. He was taken by ambulance to La Fe in Valencia, then by helicopter to Madrid and finally to Albacete. “It’s a good thing you don’t know,” he says with a laugh. And they also had to tie his hands and feet in Albacete, he was told, because he wouldn’t stop moving and pulling out cables. Addicted to machines as he later became addicted to the radio.
He was born with total blindness, but not genetically. He had a retinal detachment in his expressive blue eyes. At school, he had the support of the ONCE for affiliated people. “At the time of my birth, there was already a commitment to integrated, inclusive education in the classroom with the rest of my classmates. And I was pretty good at it,” remembers Jesús, who received the books in the summer to progress before starting classes in September.
He studied primary school at the Benjamín Palencia public school in his city, then secondary school at the Santo Ángel public school in Albacete and high school at the IES Parque Lineal. “I did not go to the ONCE school because, fortunately, I did not need it because my environment was integrated and aware of my blindness, in addition to developing my autonomy.”
He explains it after jokingly describing perfectly, as what he sees from miles away, a white t-shirt that his partner Javier Mateo is wearing with a rabbit printed on it. “Yes, it was a bluff.”he confesses into a microphone that clearly isn’t working.
Jesus was a good student in primary school, where he did very well in languages and environmental knowledge, but not so much in mathematics. “Since the calculations were sometimes very graphic, it was more difficult to touch them on the Braille paper of the Perkins machine”, a device used by the blind to write, read and learn mathematics from a young age. “We blind people tend not to like mathematics and it resists us a little – he elaborates – because it is very graphic. There are blind people who surely like it, but it was difficult for me, especially in ESO. But he passed them, as he did with the EVAU, which he also passed, “even though I did not do mathematics at all”.
Cramps
Speaking of passion, Jesus’ thing is radio. “I’ve always loved it. As far back as I can remember, I’d walk around the house with the cassette player on until I got a cramp or two,” and he laughs again. He always had a small radio, but he doesn’t remember how many he broke.. “Since I was seven, I would release one every year. It was the gift of the Three Wise Men, but if it was ruined before, it was the gift of the summer,” he remembers, laughing as his blue eyes shine. “I especially liked the pachanguera radios, those from the region of La Manchuela that came to my city, because this new way of doing radio always caught my attention.”
He studied journalism at the University of Murcia. “Without problems, with the diversity and disability support service”, although Jesús also found his life in books, which converted them to PDF format and a stationery store provided them on a USB stick so he could read them on the computer with screen. reader.
He graduated in 2021, already with internships and collaborations under his belt, and Jesús is still in the void: “In journalism, I tend to be attracted to the social because politics is all the same and the sports field has never caught my attention.”
He defines himself as a calm person and that is why people are surprised when they hear him talk so much on the radio. “My God, is that Jesus?!”, they often repeat.Yes, I’m quiet at first, but put a microphone on me and you’ll see. People who knew me and know me are happy because they see that I do what I love. And many people are surprised for the better.
In February he will be at Radio Castilla-La Mancha, where he has not found love, and he still does not know where he will end up: “I would like something that has to do with communication, not exactly with radio. You have to be realistic: it is not going to be easy, or even impossible in some cases, because we know the means. “I do not rule out being in a company that manages communication, both press releases and social networks or media relations.”
And turn off the mic with a message, especially for the elderly: “If you are presented with a disability, with the necessary adaptations and the help that ONCE or those around you can offer you, you have to set yourself goals and at least try. Even if at first it seems a little complicated.
