Encarnita Polo, standard icon with a legacy that transcends clichés | Culture | EUROtoday

Let us not be clouded by truculence or vicissitudes. Regardless of what the chronicles of occasions find yourself ruling, with Encarna Polo Oliva now we have simply left an icon of Spanish standard tradition of the second half of the twentieth century, a girl of overwhelming attraction and such an eventful life that in some other geography she would have already deserved her good. biopic with a extra sociological than merely folkloric background. An instance of that is from a dialog with this journalist 11 summers in the past, when Polo offered The rating of my lifethe autobiography that he took pains to jot down for the AISGE Foundation. “As a child I sang in front of a whore’s house so that the women would throw money at me from the windows, and with those coins I paid the entrance fee for my first sessions at the summer cinemas. I have always taken money… except now.”

In the primary rows of that torrid summer season day, she was applauded by Paco Clavel, José Manuel Parada and the much-missed Pilar Bardem, an involuntary reflection of a plural and proud Spain that knew how you can acknowledge the legacy of the Seville artist past clichés, prejudices and different stereotyped mentalities. “For me it will always be that eternal smile of the copla yeyé,” summarizes the Albacete coplera popularizer Lidia García, answerable for the podcast, in response to questions from this newspaper. Oh, campaneras! Of course we’ll all the time affiliate Mrs. Encarna with the well-known Paco, Paco, Pacowhich properly into the twenty first century skilled an uncommon second viral youth after a youtuber will synchronize it with the video of Single girlsby Beyoncé (let’s face it: the impact, 16 years later, nonetheless appears stunning to us). But García emphasizes that his expertise and disposition deserve extra generic applause. “The new rhythm that he gave to the copla was combined with a unique and particular sympathy, with that overwhelming joy when presenting the songs. Not only did he make the copla make us dance, but his charisma also helped him a lot in his television role.”

The prognosis is analogous if we flip to the journalist and movie critic Juan Luis Álvarez, who handled Encarnita with some frequency because the second half of the Eighties. “She was very excited that I told her that she had been the most advanced, even though she had conservative ideas, but it was the pure truth,” he remembers. “To those of us who were children when the mythical Passport to Dublin from TVE [1970] We were fascinated by its colorful whirlwind, which had nothing to do with what we saw later on the street. In reality, that program was a modernity race between her and Karina…”.

“At a time when The Beatles had swept the world and the music here wanted to stop looking at Spain and look at what was foreign, she represented the midpoint between Spanish folklore, the tonadillera and pop. She called herself the queen of pop flamenco, and she was,” provides Alejandro Melero, vice-rector of the Carlos III University and researcher, who goes on to say: “She was destined to be the heir of Maruja Díaz and to do what Rocío would do in the next generation. Jury, but he opted for other more pop rhythms.”

Álvarez also adds an interesting addition in terms of musical style. In some of his greatest pop milestones onlycorves-srldourfrom The Piconeros a Juanita Banderaher then husband, the brilliant Buenos Aires composer and arranger Adolfo Waitzman, already introduced the first electric guitars, a stylistic license that would later become iconic and revolutionary with Gipsy rock (1974), the LP that forged the myth of Las Grecas. After the marital separation, Polo did not give up his efforts to recover the musical scepter of his best years, although circumstances were never favorable to him again.

We are so abducted by the developmentalist rhetoric around the happy Paco, Paco that we run the risk of forgetting some other very meritorious pages, in particular the Spanish adaptation (1968) of The Ballad of Bonnie & Clyde or, almost better still, the tune (composed by Watzman) of This man in blacka TVE series directed by Antonio Mercero that at the end of 1975 paralyzed half the country in front of the television, with José Luis López Vázquez in a leading role that the cartoonist Antonio Mingote had conceived. Encarnita’s voice (“Who are you? Who despatched you right here?” / “And all in black, you make me snicker”) was the unmistakable signal, as our elders will remember, to abandon household chores and sprawl out on the couch.

The actor Pepe Viyuela, when he was very young, was from that half of Spain that saw Polo in front of the television: “I remember seeing his songs on television: they immediately reached you, they were very catchy. Paco, Paco It is in the collective memory. I don’t know if she was aware that she was bringing those flamenco rhythms closer to pop and I think she is a pioneer of what is being done now in Latin music. She filled everything with joy. My parents, when he appeared, told me to shut up and listen. Because, in addition, he liked him very well.”

Music far overshadowed Doña Encarna’s role as an actress, who above all deserves mention for the Italian series Scaramouche and for a film by Ignacio Iquino titled 07 with the 2 in front (Agent: Jaime Bonet)a parody between candid and silly that was filmed in 1966 sharing the spotlight with Cassen. It is true that later we would have to talk about the tables thanks to the assembly The Cuernicabra fairperformed at the National Theater of Santo Domingo, for endorsing the summary that journalist Álvarez formulated for us. “At one point, she was a very groundbreaking lady in this country.”

Groundbreaking and, as we say now, transversal. A nice fact. The prologue of his memoirs, the aforementioned The score of my lifewas the academic and journalist Luis María Anson, director for many years of the Abc. On the day of the presentation, Anson stood up from the audience and noted: “I’ve all the time liked being amongst actresses, as a result of they’re geniuses on the stage. I’ve all the time admired Encarnita, simply as I’m amazed by Pilar Bardem’s vitality and coherence, despite the fact that her concepts don’t coincide with mine. We owe them a giant applause of gratitude.”