Andreu Buenafuente

In 1982, Andreu Buenafuente earned his first pesetas at Radio Popular de Reus, covering sports reports on Sunday afternoons. He had no university degree and no contacts in Barcelona's offices. He had only a stubborn determination to control the rhythm of spoken comedy in front of a microphone.

And he learned the trade through countless hours in the air.

For nearly a decade, he honed his style at Radio Reus and at Cadena SER, hosting late-night shows. That early radio format, called El Terrat, grew into his own production company in 1989, founded together with a small group of local comedians. They designed an independent structure for selling programs to public and private channels without depending on the judgment of middlemen.

In 1995, TV3 gave him the late-night slot with Sense títol. Buenafuente took the classic framework of American late-night shows and adapted it to everyday conversation, absurdity, and a closeness free of protocol. The format spawned successive installments such as Sense títol 2, La cosa nostra, and Una altra cosa. During this run, he posted audience shares consistently above 30% against the national competition.

The assault on the national midnight slot

In January 2005, Antena 3 bought his format to challenge Telecinco for the late-night lead. Several analysts doubted that his irony could connect with audiences outside Catalonia. The premiere drew more than four million viewers and dominated its time slot.

But daily live broadcasting devours any script.

In 2007, he moved the format to La Sexta, a channel in which his production company was a founding shareholder. There he handled unpredictable milestones such as Rodolfo Chikilicuatre's bid for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest after a massive public vote. But free-to-air commercial television did not always live up to his ambitions. In 2012, his return to Antena 3 with the Sunday show Buenas noches y Buenafuente lasted only seven weeks on air before it was canceled due to a ten-point ratings drop in one month.

Financial risk, celluloid, and catharsis

His business ventures soon went beyond the walls of television studios. Through El Terrat, he produced films at a time when private industry was limiting budgets. In 2005, he backed Tapas, the feature debut of José Corbacho and Juan Cruz, a film that won the Golden Biznaga in Málaga and took home two Goya Awards at the 2006 ceremony. Four years later, he financed the parody Spanish Movie, shot in 2009.

On the big screen, he preferred supporting roles and brief cameos. He appeared as a supporting actor in several installments of the Torrente saga by Santiago Segura, voiced the donkey Rucio in the animated film Donkey Xote in 2007, and shared the bill with Berto Romero in the rural comedy El pregón in 2016. Buenafuente always saw other people's films as a playground free of executive constraints.

In 2014, he directed his only feature-length documentary, El culo del mundo. The film was born after an emotional slump and exposed the financial difficulties of his company, weighed down by a bank debt that nearly led to insolvency proceedings. The camera recorded his painting sessions, his creative doubts, and candid conversations with fellow professionals.

Nobody films their own miseries without paying a toll.

Physical overload and the studio as a trench

In 2016, he began a period of stability on Movistar Plus+ channel #0, hosting Late Motiv. Free from the fierce pressure of advertising-funded television, he aired more than nine hundred episodes featuring a live rock band, technical monologues, and room for new comedy talent. At the same time, he kept Nadie sabe nada alive with Berto Romero on Cadena SER from 2013, a pure improvisation format that made the jump to the screen in 2022.

In 2019, he sold all of El Terrat to The Mediapro Studio for nearly thirty million euros. The sale cleared bank debts and passed the management of staff and executive contracts onto others. Free of financial obligations, in 2023 he took on a dramatic role in the TV series El otro lado, playing a veteran mystery journalist.

In May 2025, he returned to prime time on La 1 with the show Futuro imperfecto, recorded in front of seven hundred people at the Terrassa theater. But the accumulated workload took its toll that same autumn. In November 2025, he was forced to take medical leave for exhaustion and immediately canceled the stage play El Tenoriu and the broadcast of the New Year's Eve countdown.

In 2026, he resumed filming the series El otro mundo and returned to radio broadcasting after six months of complete rest. Behind him lie more than four thousand televised studio interviews, four Goya Awards ceremonies hosted between 2010 and 2020, and a production record built from a regional radio station.