It’s hard to remember Chain reaction before the . The Telecinco contest presented by began its broadcasts in December 2022. Its beginnings were not easy, and in its first six months it obtained an average audience that barely exceeded 800,000 viewers and was around 7.5% share. Even in May 2023, its recordings were temporarily suspended. But on May 25, 2023, a team called Mozos de Arousa appeared on screen for the first time and the fate of the program changed. Chain reaction At the end of October, it reached 500 broadcasts with an average share of 9.6% and 917,000 viewers.
The two brothers Raúl and Borja Santamaría and their friend Bruno Vila, three young people from Vilagarcía de Arousa in their twenties, hooked the audience with their charisma, their spontaneity and their ability to get the strings of words right and, especially, the key test of the contest, Winning complicitywhich each day decides which of the two teams repeats the next day. The Mozos de Arousa have always been victorious there.
Three friends from Granada, Los Alhambraos, called Gustavo, David and Begoña, were the ones who eliminated the Mozos in a program whose broadcast began around 11:30 p.m. Coincidentally, in their presentation, the team that defeated the Galicians assured that they had a mission to avenge the Profes Granaínas, which was the trio that the Mozos eliminated a year and a half ago. In the first part of the program, the aspiring team managed to add 64,000 euros compared to 44,000 for the Mozos, so the Galicians were the first to compete in the decisive test. Raúl, Borjamina and Bruno, after spending three chances to pass the question and having made two mistakes, managed only seven correct answers, a low mark for what is usual for them. The Alhambraos got their eighth word right with two seconds left before time ran out.
When the eliminatory round closed, the emotion of the winners contrasted with the tears of Ion Aramendi, hugging the Mozos in what he himself described as a historic moment. Aramendi could barely speak as he dismissed the contestants. “Thank you for making me believe in this project,” the presenter told them, barely able to speak. “You have shown that you are the champion team, you have made history in this program, history on television. I take you personally, we have always kept our distance from the presenter and the contestants, but from now on we are friends. “I’m going to miss you a lot,” Aramendi added. “We were not aware of what we were achieving, we will be when we see it from the outside,” said Raúl. The three, also excited, thanked all their followers for the encouragement they received and the support they received. The presenter has also highlighted his attitude in favor of the show.
Before issuing the delivery in which the Waiters were eliminated, during the usual hours of Chain reactionat 8:00 p.m., a special program with interviews with the protagonists, the family environment and friends of the participants, reviewed their lives with images from childhood. In addition, some curiosities were shown, such as the videos of the first castings of the team, which was originally called Publers in honor of a fourth friend, Pablo, who was left out of the group.
“Life after having won more than two and a half million changes a lot, because you don’t have the worries you had before,” said Bruno in that tribute program, where they also reviewed how they have experienced the popularity they have achieved in these months. “Vilagarcía, unfortunately, was not known for good things. Now people say that Vilagarcía is the city of the Young Men,” Bruno himself reflected. The mayor of the town also highlighted their role as ambassadors of the place.
“We didn’t expect to stay this long. I remember a conversation with Bruno on the street about whether we would make it through the first program. Bruno’s goal was to get 10,000 euros per head, but we couldn’t even imagine reaching the number of programs we have today, it’s a little scary.” Then they had accumulated barely 350,000 euros. This Monday they left the program with an accumulated prize of 2,630,177 euros (). The trio prepared well before entering the contest, and they practiced for two months for at least an hour a day with formulations similar to those they have to do in Winning complicity. During the contest they have also continued rehearsing in the breaks between recordings.
Borjamina (Borja Santamaría’s nickname in honor of a dog in her family named Mina) has a degree in Business Administration and Management and works coordinating and training young people. Raúl has a degree in Teaching and a councilor in Vilagarcía. In the last Galician elections he appeared at number 7 on the PP lists for the province of Pontevedra, which earned him a seat in the Galician parliament. Both brothers founded the Asociación Xuvenil Arousa Moza group in 2017 to promote cultural and leisure activities among young people in their town, and they have always said that part of the prize money they want to use to improve the facilities at their headquarters. Bruno met the brothers through the association and was studying Law, a career he put on hold due to his television appearances, which in addition to Chain reaction They have included the contest Dancing with the stars, where its popularity and being one of the audience’s favorites made it reach the last installments.
However, the farewell of the Mozos de Arousa has been somewhat bittersweet. . In them he assured that they had closed the trio’s participation in the group’s Chimes, something that ultimately will not happen. “It’s not that we had any illusions, it’s just that it was closed,” the contestant said in a message. “It is not a tantrum for not ringing the bell, which was more than accepted in recent days. It is by discovering (and new things every day) that we have been deceived, they have laughed at us and they have lied to us to do things we did not want to do,” he added in another message. Contrary to what usually happens with winners of important prizes in other contests, this time it is not expected that the Mozos de Arousa will give interviews in the days immediately following the broadcast of their last participation.
