Roberto José Leal Guillén (born 28 June 1979) is a Spanish television presenter, reporter and journalist.

Biography

Roberto Leal was born in

Alcalá de Guadaíra Alcalá de Guadaíra () is a town located approximately 17 km southeast of Seville, Spain; in recent years the expansion of Seville has meant that Alcalá has become a suburb of that city. Alcalá used to be known as ''Alcalá de los Panadero ...

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

on 28 June 1979. Leal graduated in Journalism at the

University of Seville The University of Seville (''Universidad de Sevilla'') is a university in Seville, Spain. Founded under the name of ''Colegio Santa María de Jesús'' in 1505, it has a present student body of over 69.200, and is one of the top-ranked universi ...

. He was a journalist of the newspaper ''La Voz de Alcalá'', and the conductor of the radio program ''La Resaca'', on Sevilla FM. His father Pepe Leal died on 27 December 2019.

Career

In 2001 at 21 he began his television career working for

Telecinco Telecinco is a Spanish free-to-air television channel operated by Mediaset España. The channel was previously known as Tele 5, because it had first begun its experimental transmissions on 10 March 1989, and a year later, it was officially launc ...

's news department. After working in

Canal Sur Canal Sur ('South Channel') is part of Radio y Televisión de Andalucía (RTVA), the public broadcasting company of Andalusia. It was created by means of the devolved powers given to this region by an Act of Parliament in its statute of autono ...

and as a news reporter with

María Teresa Campos María Teresa Campos Luque (born 18 June 1941) is a Spanish journalist and television presenter. She was born in Tétouan, then Spanish protectorate in Morocco, the third of the six children of an upper-middle-class family. She moved to Má ...

in Antena 3, from 2005 to 2010 Leal was a reporter in the infotainment show ''España directo'', on La 1. In 2010 he co-hosted the short-lived infotainment show ''3D'' alongside Gloria Serra on Antena 3. In the following four years, Leal continued in Antena 3 co-hosting the morning television show ''Espejo público'', alongside

Susanna Griso Susanna Griso Raventós (born 8 October 1969) is a Spanish journalist and television presenter. Biography Susanna Griso was born into a large family in Barcelona. Her father is an industrialist of the textile sector and her mother is descended f ...

. On 15 September 2014, he returned to ''España directo'', as the anchor. From 2017 to 2020, Leal hosted the talent show ''

Operación Triunfo ''Star Academy'', called ''Operación Triunfo'' ("Operation Triumph") in Spanish-speaking countries, is a highly successful television pop music talent contest with viewer voting and reality show elements. Format There are many versions of t ...

'' on its

ninth In music, a ninth is a compound interval consisting of an octave plus a second. Like the second, the interval of a ninth is classified as a dissonance in common practice tonality. Since a ninth is an octave larger than a second, its ...

, tenth and

eleventh In music or music theory, an eleventh is the note eleven scale degrees from the root of a chord and also the interval between the root and the eleventh. The interval can be also described as a compound fourth, spanning an octave plus a f ...

seasons. In 2018, Leal hosted ''Bailando con las estrellas'', the Spanish adaptation of ''

Dancing with the Stars ''Dancing with the Stars'' is the name of various international television series based on the format of the British TV series '' Strictly Come Dancing'', which is distributed by BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC. Currently the forma ...

'', alongside Rocío Muñoz Morales. On 31 December 2018, Leal presented the annual New Year's Eve celebration broadcast for TVE live from

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

Puerta del Sol The Puerta del Sol (English: "Gate of the Sun") is a public square in Madrid, one of the best known and busiest places in the city. This is the centre ('' Km 0'') of the radial network of Spanish roads. The square also contains the famous clo ...

, alongside

Anne Igartiburu Anne Igartiburu Verdes (born 18 February 1969 in Elorrio, Biscay, Spain) is a Spanish Basque television presenter and actress. Biography She studied Industrial Marketing. She started working in the local television of Mondragón in 1993. She ...

. In 2019, Leal hosted the music show ''La mejor canción jamás cantada'' and the game show ''Vaya crack''. In 2020, Leal was hired by Antena 3 to host game shows ''

Pasapalabra ''Pasapalabra'' is a Spanish television game show, adapted from the British format ''The Alphabet Game''. The title is a portmanteau of the Spanish verb ''pasar'', "pass", and ''palabra'', literally "word". Gameplay In each episode, two contes ...

'' and ''El desafío''. He left the show temporarily on 31 August 2020 after testing positive for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

during the pandemic. Since 2021, he also hosts the Spanish version of ''

Lego Masters ''Lego Masters'' is an international reality television show in which teams compete to build the best Lego project, based on the original British show of that name, which premiered in 2017. Many other countries adapted the format and began ai ...

''.

Awards and honors

In July 2018 he received the Premio Andalucía del Turismo. In 2019, a street in his hometown of

was named after him.

References

External links

* 1979 births Living people People from Seville (comarca) Spanish television personalities Spanish television presenters {{spain-bio-stub