• Family: Choi, victim of her best friend

He is the father of sevillanas and the famous 'Salve Rociera' del olé. Son of a nobleman, he always lived his life as he wanted, he had art in his blood and he was a friend of the greatest artists of his time, also working with many of them.

Manuel Pareja-Obregón García was the grandson of Celsa Agniel de Fonfrede, a singer from Zaragoza who came to Seville to perform and in that city he met the Andalusian landowner and rancher Fernando de Concha y Sierra.

They married and had two children, Concha and Fernando, who died after being run over by a horse-drawn carriage. Celsa became a widow, and found herself with numerous debts, but managed to take her livestock to the top of the bullfighting scene with the help of Manuel García Cuesta 'El Espartero'.

From that love Pilar was born, who married the Extremaduran noble Joaquín Pareja-Obregón Sartorius Count of Prado Castellano, and they had five children: Juan de Dios, Joaquín, Celso, Pilar and Manuel, author of 'Cantinero de Cuba' and many works he did for Lola Flores, Manolo Escobar, Paloma San Basilio, Chiquetete, Lolita, Los del Río ...

He composed the 'Salve Rociera' in El Rompido, and it was there, in the Ermita del Carmen, where it was first sung. From there, it has been performed at the funeral of Queen Fabiola of Belgium, at the wedding of the Infanta Elena in Seville, when Rocío Jurado died, on the visit of Pope John Paul II to Rocío and on his trip to Kraków, it is sung in Latin America and Africa ...

Manuel, a music madman since he was a child, worked as a farmer. He also made bronze sculptures of bullfighting and hunting motifs. One day Manuel Quiroga and Rafael de León visited him and offered him a contract.

He composed his first sevillanas with the Reyes Brothers ; They were the family of his first wife, Carmen de los Reyes, born in Castilleja de la Cuesta (Seville).

At that time, the sevillanas "never ended. He squared them, reduced them to four - before there were seven - and thus managed to make them dance, changed the theme and the harmonies and put in modern drums, brass and a full orchestra "says Manuel Diego.

He remembers when Marisol was at his house , to whom his father made the themes for the movie 'Cabriola', together with the rejoneador Ángel Peralta. "An incredible commotion formed, in full swing of her films. I have recordings of that time, in some she is heard singing jokingly," recalls her son Joaquín.

Manuel lived between El Rompido, El Rocío and Seville. When he discovered El Rompido it was a fishing village and it seemed to him like paradise. In El Rocío he created the Almonte Drum School. He lived in the Cristina Pension, next to the Brotherhood of Coria, next to the Hermitage. "One day Rocío Jurado went to dinner invited by my father. There a lady from Coria arrived with a little girl and asked Rocío to hear her sing . It was Pastora Soler, " she recalls.

"Rocío and my father were very close friends. The last person she sang privately was with me at her home. She never sang again, her sister told me," reveals Joaquín.

Manuel made his First Communion in El Rocío and there baptized his sons Manuel Diego (musician, breeder of falcons and president of the Spanish Association of Falconry and Conservation of Birds of Prey ), Joaquín (flamenco pianist), Carmen and Arturo (composer and singer).

He founded the School of Drummers of the Matriz Brotherhood of Almonte, which together with the Association of the Transfer of the Virgen del Rocío and the Town Hall of the town plan to pay homage to him, put a street and a tile in the Hermitage with his' Salve Rociera ', but has been pending due to the coronavirus.

In Seville he lived in the Heliópolis neighborhood. "On the ground floor I had a piano. It was four in the morning and one day Los Marismeños, Paco de Lucía, the girl from Lola Flores were there ... He had dinner and then sang. Paco adored my father," he recalls. .

She also says that Ava Gardner was at her grandparents' farm. That his uncle Joaquín, bullfighter, "had an appaloosa horse that Eva Perón gave him in person on one of his visits to Spain in Franco's time, a horse that gave him many successes.

And that Cayetana de Alba was a close friend of the family. Perhaps that is why the president of the Manuel Pareja-Obregón Foundation is the Duke of Aliaga. And the Duke of Seville also participates in it.

Manuel and Carmen divorced, after more than 20 years of marriage. He sold everything and went to Madrid, where he met Pepa Nieto, his second wife , with whom he had a son. She divorced again, and married the third time to Camino Benedicto , with whom she had one more son. Until she died of leukemia at 62 years of age.

All this intense life and work will be reflected in a book prepared by Manuel's children, who feel "a little hurt, because the administrations in Andalusia have not done him justice, they have never paid him a tribute or given him a medal We are struggling to publicize his work, to recognize his work and give him the place he deserves. "

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