The voice is one of the main tools to persuade and convey emotions.

At least on the radio.

Maruja Fernández del Pojo

was one of the most beloved announcers in Franco's society when she embodied the fictional character

Elena Francis

in the space

El consultorio de Elena Francis.

That

stale and macho Spain

that turned women into an object relegated to the private sphere of the home no matter what her mind felt and her heart found in Elena Francis a kind of lifeguard who answered the listeners' questions about extramarital pregnancies,

adultery, housework and other chores.

Maruja Fernández was

born in Cuba in 1925,

but unlike other Spaniards who sought to make the Americas, she decided to do the Spains.

She was the daughter of Spanish immigrants and when she arrived in our country she began to

work in Caribbean music orchestras.

She even worked in the company of the legendary

Antonio Machín

until RNE hired her in 1955.

Propaganda vehicle

In 1962 he got the role of Elena Francis, for which he received the

Ondas and Antena de Oro awards

in 1966. From that year on, the journalist

Juan Soto Viñolo

was in charge of the program's scripts alone until his disappearance on the airwaves in 1984. When Soto Viñolo revealed

the true identity

of Mrs. Francis

years later,

a great social upheaval was created.

By active and passive,

Maruja always hid her true identity

because the listeners believed that Mrs. Francis was of flesh and blood.

She was a propaganda vehicle orchestrated by the

Catalan couple José Fradera and Francisca Elena Bes,

owners of the Francis Beauty Institute and Laboratory who, through the voices of María Garriga, Rosario Caballé, María Teresa Gil, Soledad Ambrojo and, later, Maruja Fernández, promoted their feminine products.

Lost birth certificate

When Fernández / Francis was asked about her age, she

always pretended to be clueless

and commented that her birth certificate had been lost during the Castro revolution.

Maruja

married fellow announcer José Pascual,

of whom she was widowed.

When she retired in 1990, Maruja used to attend events related to the field of radio, as well as to honor colleagues.

He died in 2001 in Piera (Barcelona).

Five years after his death, chance would have it that in the abandoned Can Tirel farmhouse belonging to the Fradera-Bes couple,

a million letters from the readers of the time were found,

most of them gnawed by rats, moldy from humidity or damaged by Over time.

As the real estate agency ignored the content, the Arxiu Comarcal del Baix Llobregat (Barcelona) took over this cultural treasure.

To date, only slightly more than ten thousand have been digitized.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

See links of interest

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