Daniel Raquela is from Chile, works as an audiovisual editor and 20 years ago was the camarráfo of a Mendoza channel. The day of 3 March was his head to cover a press conference by Alberto Flamarique, at the time Minister of Labor of Fernando de la Rúa. Within a few days the Harvest Festival was to be held, but in that same hotel Charly García had prepared an episode that was going to mark a before and after in her life. Raquela tells how he was the only cameraman who filmed Charly’s jump from the terrace to the pool, a leap that without the acumen and intuition of Raquela would have remained a legend of mouth to mouth.
“The reporter tells me to go outside because we saw a lot of fans peeking out to see if they could see Charly. We make a note to the fans, we send the material to the channel from the mobile. I put the camera on the floor and when I’m changing the tape, all the fans start screaming. He looked up and I see him peeking out on the ceiling. I grab the camera from the floor and put rec”, told Filo.News.The cameraman, who now lives in Chile and continues to be linked to the development of audiovisual material, explains that if he had taken a few more seconds to film, the image of Charly García jumping from the terrace would not exist.
Daniel Raquela
“If I first took the camera to my shoulder and then I pressed the rec I didn’t see it. I thought I recorded Charly’s suicide. You couldn’t see there was a pool from where we were,” he says. What comes next is Charly Pure: he, his companion and all the journalists who were at the hotel following Flamarique approached the pool. Raquela defines the musician’s stance as follows: “We saw him swimming as if he were in a spa.”
He adds: “When my partner asked him where he had left the Superman cape he answered ‘in your room.'”
Although he was the only person who filmed that incredible moment and that 20 years later is still remembered, Raquela hope to close a circle with Charly Garcia. The singer invited him at his home in Buenos Aires at the time, although for different reasons the cameraman did not accept.” When I called him he invited me to his house, told me that he always watched the video with friends. I was invited by a good vibe, I regret not going,” he said in dialogue with Filo.News. But in addition to getting together, he has a desire to develop something with Charly. >
“I would like to join him and make that invitation, I am looking forward to having a contact and be able to record it. Make a mini-documentary,” he told this portal. Finally, Raquela gives her own feelings about how she saw Garcia in that historic leap. For the cameraman that day, the musician had something with the city: “I think he wanted to close a cycle in Mendoza. He didn’t want to take that bad time and he threw himself.” After the show he shared with Lito Nebbia and Mercedes Sosa in town, Charly had an inconvenience with a fan in a bar. She threw a glass in his face and then was detained in a Penitentiary
