Iker Jimenez

Iker Jiménez Elizari (Vitoria, January 10, 1973) is a Spanish journalist. Graduated in Information Sciences from the Complutense University of Madrid and the European University of Madrid, he has directed and presented the radio program Milenio 3 on Cadena SER and directs and presents with his wife, who is also journalist Carmen Porter, Cuatro's Cuarto Milenio television space. Since 2020, she has published an irregular podcast (La Estirpe de los Libres) on YouTube, and starting the same year it also presents the outreach program Horizonte, also on Cuatro.

Due to his work directing Milenio 3 and Cuarto Milenio, Jiménez is one of the most renowned communicators on Spanish television, as well as parodied and criticized. Although he has been accused on occasions of promoting trash television, he has also been awarded in several instances for journalistic and communicative merit, with three Golden Antennas and an Ondas Award, along with several other awards.

Biography

Son of the art gallery owner Pedro Ramón Jiménez—an expert in Flemish painting—, and his wife, María Elizari. Since he was a child, he was passionate about dinosaurs. His interest in "the paranormal" began after reading a book about UFOs from his uncle's library, a fact that coincided with a newspaper report about the sighting of UFOs in the province of Álava in 1984. His references in the ufology were Antonio Ribera and J. J. Benítez.^{[citation required]}

He began his professional journalistic activity at Radio Alameda, a municipal station in Torres de la Alameda—a municipality in the Community of Madrid—at the age of seventeen. His first program was called The Other Dimension. Later he worked at the community radio station Radio Enlace in Madrid, where he presented a program of events and mysteries called Al filo de lo impossible. A year later the space was renamed At the end of the stairs and was broadcast for two years on the community radio station Onda Verde.

Together with fellow journalist Lorenzo Fernández Bueno, he published a fanzine called La Última Hora before both were recruited by Fernando Jiménez del Oso for his new monthly magazine Enigmas (Editorial América Ibérica, 1995). In it he published his first reports, field investigations and exclusives, which gave rise to his first literary works. ^{[ citation needed ]}

He published his first book, Unsolved Enigmas (1999), which was followed by a sequel, as well as other highly successful monographic works —Fronteras de lo impossible, The cursed paradise, Encounters—. He worked as director and presenter at Antena 3 Radio and Radio 80 - La Coruña delegation -, Radio 16, RKR Radio, Onda Verde, Radio Voz, Onda Madrid and Radio Intercontinental. On television, he collaborated on Telecinco and Antena 3 in various programs, having his own sections before arriving at Cadena SER. There, it first had a section within the program If it dawns we leave, and later it obtained its own program, Milenio 3.^{[citation required i>]}

After the first four seasons of Milenio 3, a space that began on June 1, 2002, he began to present and direct, to this day, the television program Cuarto Milenio en Cuatro: in Both night spaces address various paranormal phenomena and other unsolved enigmas through interviews and research work. Among them are ethnography, pseudosciences, science in its most diverse variants, anthropology, ufology, parapsychology, esotericism, criminology or archaeology. In 2008 Cuatro entrusted him with a series of reports called "Iker Jiménez Confidencials." The first of them, broadcast on July 18, 2008, dealt with the Chernobyl accident. Later he would direct another monograph, "The Infinite Leap", about the origins and art of prehistoric man. ^{[ citation needed ]}

With his radio program Milenio 3 he broke the best audience records in the early morning hours of Spanish radio, placing him at a mark of &&;&&&&&&&0776000.&&&&&0776,000 listeners. Milenio 3 entered the history of Spanish radio broadcasting as it was the first space from a private station to be broadcast in America: Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and the United States.^{[quote required]}

He organized a UFO Alert throughout Spain on June 26, 2004, within the radio program Milenio 3, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the first Spanish UFO Alert carried out in 1979 by Antonio José Ales on his radio program Midnight. Milenio 3 organized a second "UFO Alert" on June 9, 2012, with headquarters in the Millennium Dome in Valladolid and dozens of correspondents on the five continents.

In 2007, 2008 and 2009 it launched three collections of books-DVDs on the contents of Cuarto Milenio. The last of them was sold together with the newspaper El País, belonging to the same communication group, Santillana.^{[citation required]}

In 2009 he directed and presented the documentary about prehistory The infinite jump, a two-hour tour of the main caves with rock art in Spain and France. During filming, new samples of art more than twenty thousand years old were discovered in the Cantabrian caves of La Pasiega and El Castillo. The most important specialists in the field of prehistoric studies participated in the documentary. Jean Clottes —president of UNESCO conservation of the World Heritage of Rock Art—, J. A. Lasheras —director of the Altamira cave—, Antonio Rosas and Manuel Martín Loeches. Despite its quality, it did not obtain the support of the audience.^{[citation required]}

He has published eight essays: Unsolved Enigmas I and II; The cursed paradise; Frontiers of the impossible; Encounters, The history of UFOs in Spain; Tumbas sin nombre —along with Luis Mariano Fernández—; The Night of Fear and Milenio 3, the book, the last of which occupied the position of best sellers in the country from the moment of its release.^{[ citation required]} He also dared to write the novel in Camposanto, published in several countries (Editorial Suma de Letras), based on the life of the painter Jheronimus van Aken Hieronymus Bosch and Philip II's obsession with his work. It sold &&&&&&&&&0140000.&&&&&0140,000 copies in Argentina and was translated in Italy (Il Villaggio Maledetto, Edizioni Il Punto D´Incontro) and in Germany (Campus Sanctus, Rowolt Verlag), where it became a bestseller. more from &&&&&&&&&&060000.&&&&&060 000 copies.^{[citation required]}

In 2013 he collaborated in the short-lived Telecinco space Al Otro Lado, which his own wife directed and presented. Two programs were broadcast.

On June 28, 2015, the last program of Milenio 3 was broadcast. According to Iker Jiménez, the reason for ending the program was motivated by personal reasons - specifically, dedicating more time to his daughter -, thus seeking to deny the rumors that it was due to an exclusivity contract with Mediaset, as was commented on the networks. Almost two months later, Iker Jiménez launched a podcast on Radioset called Universo Iker, which, combined with other alternative formats such as Dos en la Noche or Carmen Connectionwould remain on air until July 2018.

On September 22, 2018, Milenio Live was launched, a weekly live format that is broadcast during the early hours of Friday to Saturday through YouTube. The program is carried out from the Alma Studio, in the home of Iker Jiménez, who, in addition to personally taking care of all the technical and production aspects, directs and presents the program together with his wife, Carmen Porter.^{[citation required]}

In 2022 he announced the launch of GOIA, a pioneering project to reinterpret the work of the painter Francisco de Goya through the use of Artificial Intelligence, an area that he also addressed in April 2023 by starring in the first Mediaset España promotion made with this technology.

Media activity

Radio

• Millennium 3 (2002-2015), at the SER Chain.
• Universe Iker (2015-2018), on Radioset.

Television

• The Other Dimension (2001), Antena 3.
• Fourth Millennium (2005-present), in Four. (From March to August 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic stopped broadcasting, during which time there were replenishments)
• Fourth Millennium Zoom (2016-2017), in Cuatro.
• Covid report (2020-2021), Telecinco.
• Horizon (2020-present), in Telecinco and later in Cuatro.

Internet

• Millennium Live (2018-2021), YouTube and Mtmad.
• The Stirpe of the Free (2020-present), on YouTube.

Music

At the end of 2018 he began experimental musical composition. His first work was The Spirit of the Cave, an immersive sound exploration in a cave with Paleolithic rock art, followed by < i>Talaván.

Works

Dissemination books

• Unresolved puzzles: the most surprising and inexplicable 'expedients' in Spain (Edaf, 1999)
• The cursed paradise: a trip to the most enigmatic corner of our geography (Corona Borealis, 1999)
• Unresolved puzzles II (Edaf, 2000)
• Borders of the impossible (Edaf, 2001)
• Encounters: the history of UFOs in Spain (Edaf, 2002)
• Tombs without name (Edaf, 2003) - Written in collaboration with Luis Mariano Fernández
• The night of fear (Edaf, 2004)
• Millennium 3: the book (Aguilar, 2006) - In collaboration with Carmen Porter

Novel

• Camposanto (Summa de Letras, 2005)

Editor and director of other collections

• Library Fourth Millennium (25 vol.; Aguilar, 2007)
• Library The Archive of the Mystery of Iker Jiménez (23 vol.; Edaf, 2003)
• Library The Imprescindibles of the Mystery (14 vol., Lesson Circle, 2006)
• Official catalogue of The Ship of the Mystery: Photo book. (Autoeditado, 2015) - Created in collaboration with Juan Villa and Annaïs Pascual

Prizes

2004

• Antena de Oro, awarded by the Federation of Spanish Radio Television Associations. A prize awarded by colleagues of all chains, in recognition of their work as director and presenter of Millennium 3 in the SER Chain as an innovation of the media and information rigor.
• He gave the best journalist for the 11-M Victims Association at an event in Cáceres, where journalists Baltasar Magro and Lorenzo Milá were also awarded.

2006

• Televisive Person of the year 2006, obtaining 43.5% of the votes in a macro survey conducted by the Vocento Group's media through its internet portal.
• Fourth Millennium is voted outreach program preferred by website users Wow..

2007

• Millennium 3 becomes the first Spanish radio program of a private radio station to be broadcast throughout Latin America on February 24.
• The Golden Truffle of 2007, granted by the journalists of the various radio stations of Vitoria, as a prominent journalist and character who has taken the world with pride the "Nombre de Vitoria". This award, which fulfills its tenth edition, is a great classic of the Alavese journalism.
• The emission of Millennium 3on 23 November 2007 from the Mendizorroza Pavilion is considered to be the most powerful in the history of the radio broadcasting of Euskadi. There were 5100 people, in an unprecedented event.^{[chuckles]required]}

2008

• Arias Montano Award for disclosure, awarded in Valladolid by Cultural Ambito of El Corte Inglés.

2010

• The José Cela Camilo University, in a pioneering event, opens a seminar called “The Passion to Investigate” imparted and focused on the biography of Iker Jiménez for criminology graduates.
• Fourth Millennium becomes the most downloaded content of the year in the Mediaset Play Four service, while Millennium 3 becomes the most downloaded program of the entire radio broadcast in Spanish. The website www.ikerjimenez.com beats record with more than eight million downloads.
• Fourth Millennium, Silver Medal to the Best International Graphical Header at the 2010 New York International Television and Film Festival.
• Millennium 3 in the SER Chain reaches a record of audience share in the Spanish radio in the second wave of the EGM 2010: 60% of the listeners in the early morning listen in the space presented and directed by Iker Jiménez.
• Iker Jiménez awarded, together with the president of the Provincial Court of Valladolid Feliciano Trebolle, with the Silver Insignia of the Spanish Society of Criminology and Forensic Sciences (SECCIF) in an event held in Valladolid.
• Millennium 3 bat all the record of hearing in the early morning in Spain. Historical record since audiences are computed. 750,000 listeners from 1-4 in the morning, fivefold to the competition.

2014

• Millennium 3 broadcasts a historic program, live, from the Roman Amphitheater of Merida two thousand years after the death of Octavian Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Internet tickets to the event were exhausted in less than a minute of its opening.

2015

• Antena de Oro in the television section as best presenter, in recognition of her work at the head of the veteran Fourth Millennium.
• The National Television Ondas Award for, in the words of the jury, "its work as a presenter, communicator and director, leading a uniquely styled program and consolidating the genre of mystery both on television and on radio".

2018

• Medal of professional merit at the First International Congress of Applied Crimes (Noya).
• Award for the Support of Uncommon Diseases awarded by the Hospital Clínico San Carlos (Madrid).

2019

• Great Cross of Victims of Terrorism to the Programme Fourth Millenniumgranted by the Historical Association of the Guardia Civil.

2020

• Independent Prize of the year, in the section of Communication and Television, awarded by Union by Leganés.
• Medal of police merit, given in personal capacity by Jesús Montero of the National Police Corps, for his informative work during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain.

2021

• Award of Honor to the Best Radio and TV Communicator in the Area of Public Programs and Research 2021, awarded by Fundación Gala.
• Named one of the 50 most influential people in the field of communication in Spain by the Merca2 website.
• Named one of the 25 most influential personalities of the year 2021 in Spain by Forbes.

2022

• Great Cross to Solidarity COVID-19, in recognition of its commitment during the pandemic as the programme director Horizongranted by the Historical Association of the Guardia Civil.
• I Palencia City Tourism Award in the media category.
• Arturo Duperier 2022 Award for Information Sciences.
• Antena de Oro 2022 to the Horizonte program, awarded by the Federation of Radio and Television Associations.

2023

• Naranja Lifestyle Natural World Award for the program "Horizonte", awarded by the Peña of First Plane Journalists.

Controversies

Iker Jiménez's programs and publications dedicated to the paranormal are the subject of judgment by scientists and skeptics, who see in them an exploitation of people's credulity, and by some educators, some sectors of journalism, which place them in the same field of degradation of the profession as reality shows and other forms of what, applied to television, is called trash television, and even by other mystery investigators.

Boisaca's corpse

In his book Unsolved Enigmas, Iker Jiménez recorded an event that occurred in Santiago de Compostela in May 1988, in which a train ran over a young man who was walking along the tracks in its path. over the Paredes bridge. The state in which the body was left, buried in a common grave in the local cemetery in the Boisaca neighborhood, the fact that it did not have any type of documentation on it and together with the fact that the young man was not identified by fingerprints, meant that Different mystery journalists fed the case with theories about the identity of the young man, ranging from the fact that he was a lost mental patient, a wild child or a "temponaut." The story was baptized as the "Walker", the "Corpse" or the "boy from Boisaca". In fact, Iker Jiménez dedicated several programs to him, in Milenio 3 and in Fourth Millennium . However, in January 2009, a DNA test showed that it was a 22-year-old young man named Óscar Ortega Vasalo, who had disappeared from his home in Barcelona a month earlier. In fact, Óscar's file appeared on the Inter-Sos missing persons website.

Unnamed graves

In her book Tumbas sin nombre (2003), in which an attempt is made to identify the faces of Bélmez with real ancestors of the owner of the house, a photograph is presented on page 47 of a Civil Guard who is identified with the teleplasty called La Pava. However, on page 30 and in the central report of the book, where you can see the comparisons of the image of the Civil Guard and La Pava, it is seen that the copy of the photograph had been manipulated to coincide with said teleplasty. The recreation was originally made in the program Flashback, on Canal Sur, and for rights reasons, the authors of the book made a new recreation, hence the photograph arrived altered to the authors of the analysis, José Manuel García Bautista and Rafael Cabello Herrero, as stated on page 113 of the book.

UFO Alert

The UFO alert organized in 2004 led journalists from critical environments to create the Magonia project, inviting the public to build fake UFOs—OVIs, identified flying objects—to test the reliability of testimonies in these types of events. However, no one participated in this initiative.

The missing cosmonaut

In a Cuarto Milenio program in June 2006, Jiménez addressed the case of an alleged missing cosmonaut. According to the program, the astronaut in question was Ivan Istochnikov. According to the version narrated in the program, this was the pilot of Soyuz 2. When the docking with Soyuz 1 failed, the Soviet authorities tried to minimize the problem by stating that it was an unmanned ship and trying to erase all traces of its existence.. To support the veracity of the story, photographs of Istochnikov were shown. However, the whole story was not real, since Ivan Istochnikov was a character invented by photographer Joan Fontcuberta for his 1997 project "Sputnik: The Odyssey of the Soyuz 2". At no time had Foncuberta hidden that Istochnikov was fictitious; in fact, the astronaut's name is a Russian translation of the artist's name.