• Television Cuéntame's Last "Act of Love": The Five Episodes That Forever Changed the Series
  • Obituary The emotional farewell letter of the last screenwriter of Cuéntame a su maestro: "You were Eduardo until the end"

After 22 years, in many homes there will be a place in the armchair of a loved one who has left during all this time. Since last night, there's one more hole: Tell me how it happened.

Its creators, its actors, its writers, its team said it from the beginning of this season: the farewell of Cuéntame had to be at the height of a series that changed not only the concept of television but also the concept of ourselves because it made us all see ourselves in it.

This Wednesday, a colleague told me: "I have never seen an episode of Cuéntame and I have to say that without seeing any, this last chapter has made me cry." The ability of Tell Me How It Happened has not been to make us cry. Maybe, in this last season, yes, but because who doesn't cry when a loved one leaves? In this season, in this last episode, not only Herminia (María Galiana) has left us, we have all left. And they have left as they arrived: Alcántara being one hundred percent.

"When I look at the bottom of the cup, I see scars, which is like looking at life. Is that the way: not to throw away what is broken, but to put it back together until it becomes a work of art?" is one of the paragraphs that Carlos reads to Karina in her room in Sagrillas the same day they return. A paragraph that gives meaning to the whole chapter and therefore to the whole series. What is broken can be fixed, wounds can heal, Cuéntame can go, but it will always remain in our memory, like that broken cup that can be turned back into a work of art.

They'd been warning him for weeks: "You're going to cry a lot." We were not deceived. The last chapter of Cuéntame is the death of Herminia, the Chanquete of the 21st century. It is the reunion of a grandmother who awaits the arrival of her grandson whom she has not seen for years to ask him for three things: "When I die, let no one wear black; I don't want the wreaths that funeral homes put up, I want a bouquet of flowers from the field; And I want you to dance a pasodoble."

Under the oak tree that her father planted, in a garden chair, with a kite flying above it, Herminia looked up at the sky, took a breath and left. The last lesson of a grandmother who has left us hundreds of lessons during these 22 years was given. "Carlos, you've got to fix this, you've got to put this family back together." Herminia said it very clearly. She knew her family loved her, but "it's one thing to want and another thing to need." Herminia, although it may seem cruel and sad, the Alcántaras no longer needed her. They had to let it fly like the kite, wagging its tail. Carlos let her go. And he left, as we would all like to go, without suffering, where we want to be and with whom we want to go.

"You're the one who has to fix it because you know the history of this family and you're the one who can keep it going. You are a writer and you have been able to tell very well all the things that have happened. You have to make good things happen now so you can write them down," he tells his Carlos. A shocking dialogue that culminates with our Herminia asking her grandson for a kiss that Carlos gives her without knowing that it would be the last. How many kisses have we given without knowing that they would be the last?

He left sad, sad because he left a family disunited, confronted by an inheritance, separated and almost destroyed. But Tell Me It couldn't end like this. The series that has best reflected what we are, had to end by showing its fundamental pillar, that in all families they cook beans, but in all families there is always the possibility of returning. Like that phrase that says "you should always try to return to the place where you have been happy". The place of the Alcántaras, of any of us, is the family. It's a father, a mother, a child, a sibling, a grandfather, a grandmother, your partner...

Carlos returned to Sagrillas in the midst of the 11/22 attacks because his grandmother asked him to, but also because they were there. It wasn't the best of welcomes, but it was the best of farewells. Carlos complied with each of his grandmother's requests. A grandmother who has been everyone's grandmother for 22 years, a mother who has been the mother of many for <> years. And she, like us, knew that the link between the Alcántaras, that the link between them was always Carlos. And that's why Carlos had to come full circle.

Herminia, the only one who knew Karina was pregnant, told her: "Some leave and others come." Back the circle. Carlos then becomes the gold resin of that broken cup. After a monumental and realistic brawl between siblings, with Herminia present and Mercedes crying over her mother's departure, the Alcántaras get into a fight that causes everyone to leave in terror during the funeral. Carlos takes responsibility for bringing them back together.

"It's what Grandma wanted. He was very sad, he told me. That's right, our grandmother is gone sad. He told me that he wanted us to go back to being the family we were before, that when something happened to us, we all lived it as if it happened to us. And he was right there." And the resin took effect and the mug became a work of art again.

If 22 years ago it was Carlos who started Cuéntame with his piggy bank at Domund and his friends Josete and Luis in the truck in the wasteland, Cuéntame's farewell had to be him too. It had to be them, together, on the way to their truck in San Genaro.

Tell me how it happened has had its farewell, its best ending, its best story, the one that for 22 years was told to us by an adult Carlitos in the voice of Carlos Hipólito. There are so many phrases in last night's episode to say goodbye and say goodbye that it's hard to pick one of them. But I'll stick with Toni's to his sister Inés: "You don't have to be objective with the people you love. You want it, period."

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