• Anniversary. The authors of 'La la la' speak 50 years later
  • Amores.La hectic sentimental life of Julio Iglesias

Ramón Arcusa's life has been torrential: 83 years since he came to the world, more than 60 since he founded the Dynamic Duo together with Manuel de la Calva, almost two decades of close collaboration with Julio Iglesias, successes, anecdotes ... His Memoirs, which are published this Monday with the title of 'I am a rogue, I am a gentleman (or almost)', they may know little, because they only occupy 240 pages and surely secrets have been kept. But at the same time they are a pleasant memory of that Spain that discovered pop and an approach to Julio Iglesias of the 80s, the one that rose as the great colossus of the sentimental ballad. It is even more difficult to summarize that life in two pages, but we go there.

He explains that he started flirting when he was in the Dynamic Duo, but without going over. It gives me something to hide. You got bloated, didn't you? Well, all the boys tried to date girls, life is about that. When we started singing there were more opportunities. We had a lot of fans. But our fans were mostly 12 or 13 years old !, and we never dated young girls. Near my house in Barcelona, ​​on Gaudí Avenue, there was a school, and before class the girls stood at my door to make noise. The neighbors were fed up. Compared to Julio Iglesias, you will have been a saint, anyway. That of course. Julio's is incredible. Manolo and I had girlfriends, but in the end we got married and we were faithful. I have been with my wife, Shura, for 50 years and it has been a happy marriage. He has no shame in explaining that he once hooked up with a young Amanda Lear, Dalí's future muse and queen of disco music, without knowing that she was a transvestite. That time I was really in league, because we didn't know who we were. She was in a Madrid pool with a group of foreigners. I convinced her to go out, and then what happened happened, they explained who she was and I cut myself off. She says: "I knew that her sexuality - or gender, or whatever her name is when this book appears - didn't fit with mine." To the minimum it slides observations of this type. He doesn't get along with the intersectional thing or the 'woke' fashion, it's just that all this has driven us half crazy, and for no reason, right? For example, the animalists: is that they have half a philosophical cake. They only care about animals that return affection, such as cats, dogs, or horses. It is a Disney animalism that flees from rats and roaches and kills mosquitoes. Mosquitoes do not have rights because they are not pretty? It already has a theme for the next book. It is half done and I have a title: 'Inconvenient truths told by a skeptic'. But I don't know if the publisher will let me take it out. Don't believe it, now there is a market for everything politically incorrect. That's how I define myself on Twitter. All this is born with puritan America; nobody wants to be bad, or pretend to be. I agree with many social advances, but when this is used to divide from the left, one begins to doubt so much goodness. Radical feminism, climate change, animalism, anti-Semitism or the gender of words are not class struggles, but between citizens, it is a kind of new religion that aims to make profit in the form of votes. In his book he is generous explaining anecdotes, but surely secrets are kept. There is a delimited line, but unconsciously. I wrote a first version that I later modified. There were things misspelled others were not worth it. I wanted to make a nice book, because I am like that. As Churchill said, "My story will be benevolent because I will write it myself." I am only hard on people who pretend that they are more than they are, like politicians. Should we ask Julio Iglesias for permission to tell things about his life? Julio does not yet know that I have written the book. But I explain things within the explainable, this is not 'Save me': things that everyone knows, or anecdotes that nobody knew but that do not compromise. Like the two Rolls Royces. Two Rolls were accidentally burned at his house. The same day, I was a witness. I have lived with Julio for a long time, I have been with him more than many of his girlfriends. That is not difficult, in the 80's he changed his partner continuously. Well, it depends. La Flaca was there, a stunning girl who spent many years with him. Other girlfriends lasted less. They usually approached, and Julio left. He explains that Julio once spent a million dollars on wine and that his mother made him omelette. There's a photo of him on the private jet showing him with a bottle of wine, an omelette, and a bucket of KFC fried chicken. How do you explain the chicken? Maybe it was a moment Trump, that American passion for fast food. I remember once a collaborator brought wings for dinner, from a Chinese, but I have never seen him eat fried chicken. [After the interview, Ramón sends us a message: "Julio called me and I asked him about the chicken. He told me he gave him that day".] This anecdote is very good: once Julio demanded the captain of his yacht to stop the waves of the sea. It is like when Elton John called his record label to stop the wind, because it would not let him sleep. This class of elite artists lives in a separate world, ideal, they do not understand things from reality. They hope that everything will be easy for them, as they want. In Barbados he insisted on removing the seaweed from the sea because they spoiled the landscape from his house, and when he asked about the weather the next day, if they told him it would rain, he called more people until someone told him it would be sunny. I also experienced that, it is completely true. Now a new edition of 'MasterChef' is issued and there is a contestant, José Mari, who imitates Julio. What does he think of his imitators? It doesn't bother him. Unlike Sánchez with Iglesias in the government, it is something that does not take away his sleep. Tell me an anecdote about Julio that does not appear in the book. An 'extra' for LOC. In 1993 I asked him to sing 'Resistiré', but he said no, it seemed a bit of a negative song. And look now. Have you been overwhelmed by the massive resurgence of 'Resistiré'? No, because Resistiré is 32 years old and has always been there. We have been asked hundreds of times for Alzheimer's patients or children with cancer. We started to get videos of friends, fans, hospitals, then the nuns ... Anything to say about the version of the Infanta Elena? I find it nice. It is appreciated that the King's family participates in some way in what the people feel. How has the pandemic lived from Miami? Here everything is being taken more lightly. In Florida they have left us quite loose, but with a mask, gloves ... We have been able to do some sport. The advantage of Miami is that it is a flat city and with many houses, there is not the closeness that there is in Spain, nor bars every five meters.

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • LOC
  • music
  • Julio Iglesias

Music Manuel Alejandro: "That man has to be wonderful in bed"

Folklore Las Grecas? Better put yourself as Lola Flores

Music Yotuel Romero, on 'A step forward': "It was the first series in Spain where a black-skinned Latino managed to be the protagonist"