Twenty years without Gila, the genius who laughed at the limits of humor: "He faced a dictatorship, no less, and came out unscathed"

• QUICO ALSEDO

  @QuicoAlsedo

  Madrid

Updated on Friday, 29October2021-01: 41

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• Humor The tragicomedy of Miguel Gila, the brightest hick in the darkest Spain

• The new clowns on TV "White humor is an invention of goodies"

Are you the reader?

Let it be!

Because Gila is coming back, Miguel.

The one in the red shirt, the one-line jokes (the supreme discipline of humor) and the post-war misery turned into laughter.

The one who was born alone at home.

And he went out to look for his mother, for being nice and giving notice.

.

"Well, that is the last time you are born alone."

The one who called the enemy on a landline phone, dating back to the 19th century, and asked him not to attack in the afternoon: "It doesn't suit me at all."

The republican boy who the fachas shot in the war, but they shot him "badly"

: he said that it had really happened to him, that "the Moors were drunk", that he pretended to be dead and then, after traveling from jail to jail, turned that drama into one of his most celebrated monologues.

To be born and to die, the material with which Gila built his glory and the cement with which dreams are built ... Which in the end dreams are: obviously he was not born alone, but in the bosom of a humble working-class family, almost raised by his grandparents, in Tetuán, Madrid, 1919.

Nor was he ever shot, not even badly shot, as

his friend Ángel Palomino

later wrote in

: “He made that up.

But come on, he wasn't in jail either ... ».

Neither was he exiled to Latin America because of the dictatorship, but because of trouble with skirts, claims one of his daughters, Carmen, to draw a sentimentally labyrinthine life and sexually, apparently, pugnacious.

That red boy, who actually sat the two

on the couch at the

expense of the absurdity of the Civil War,

, at the Palacio de La Granja, at least once a year.

It turns out that Carmen Polo loved that boy "so witty."

Whoever Gila was - certainly a genius of humor, with every right to invent his life, his death and whatever came out of his mind - now we have a certainty: he will be shot again.

This time, by professionals. And not for his children in the noble art of humor, "but for his grandchildren," says

, creator of

, promoter at the time of his farewell from the stage before dying in 2001 -of cancer , ruined by manirroto-, and now producer of the tribute

: two unique performances at Madrid's Teatro Nuevo Alcalá with comedians such as

and

the venerable and revered, reinterpreting their genius monologues.

«Grandchildren» because, says Contreras, «Gila curiously did not leave children.

He was without issue at the time.

, nor all those people looked like their children or claimed their style.

He told truths, and did not laugh while others did.

That was incredible, really

Ignatius farray

Paradoxes of life: the 21st century has already entered, so far and so close to the Civil War, with the fever of

with American roots and format (you know, the high banquet, the mike and the monologue) When all the new boys (and girls, let's have the party in peace) have turned to that man with a beret, who under the guise of a small-town man released the truths of the ferryman in a Spain in black and white.

Grandson will therefore be Ignatius Farray, but not only of Gila, but of his own grandmother Irene.

The thread that joins the three of them is told by the comedian to

: «Look what it is for me Gila that I remember starting to laugh to imitate the laughter of my grandmother, Irene, whom I called

, as very obscene, far from any decorum.

As is mine.

Let's put the political nuance on it: again, uniting what the War had separated.

"

was a conservative lady, but he came out with the red shirt and broke."

But to speak of Gila is to speak of bitterness, narrowness, poverty, the sad clown who makes people laugh but then sleeps alone and rambles in solitude: «Only a genius», says Contreras, «is capable of turning that sadness into laughter, with that magic touch that he had.

Ignatius imagine that he will speak with knowledge of the facts: “All comedy has that background, it helps us to forget what this really is.

And the ultimate goal of all comedy is to transform one thing into another ».

He is recognized as Gila's heir, and Gila's heir is not recognized.

«I would like to be, but he never laughed, and I shield myself all the time in my crazy laugh so as not to talk about myself and tell the truth.

.

That was incredible, really.

The biggest

technical trick

Ignatius kneels down to is not even a technical trick: “Many years ago I heard an older, very

comedian

say that the most important thing about our craft is having a heart. I thought, 'What a cheesy one.' Today, honestly, I think there is nothing else. The most important thing about Gila's monologues was not his sentences, so polished, or the phone, or ... The most important thing is that he meant it from his heart.

Thus,

will also be a granddaughter

, who at full blast gives us Gila's most powerful weapons over the phone: «To begin with, I am amazed that on stage she did not laugh, her absolute seriousness, something very difficult to find today. But his most total weapon was the handling of the absurd, a spectacular thing:

. You can make people laugh in two ways: either by looking a lot smarter than your audience, or by looking a lot dumber. The humor is that one plus one can never be two, and a joke fails if the viewer does the addition before you do. That never happened with Gila: he always did it long before you.

We continue with Morgade, who becomes a cataract: «Live he was

, he

... He created a genre in himself: everyone wanted to see him, see how he did it ».

He laughed at the War with his wounds still open.

His humor was healing, therapeutic

Ana Morgade

And back to that sadness: «How he handled it is enormous. I am dedicated to laughter, which is a rocket that makes us take off from anguish, and then return to reality and not be so scared at how rare it is to live, at the fear of the grand finale ... Well, there he was a genius. Comedians live in the debate of how long it takes for us to laugh at a misfortune, and he laughed at the Civil War with the wounds still open. His humor was healing, therapeutic. I always say that you are getting over a misfortune when you start making jokes about it. He meant the same for this country.

It will be necessary to listen, already put, to the own Gila. Who wrote: “This may sound stupid, but I envy the vocational poor. I envy your freedom. I can allow myself to say this because I have been and I know that, although it may not seem like it, it has its advantages. More: «What I like the most is taking long walks. There is nothing comparable to walking through the streets of the city, especially when you arrive at a square full of old people sunbathing. That stamp sums up the whole life.

More: «The nonsense has to be credible.

You need an internal logic.

If I say that I have taken a cow in the field and I have taken it to my house and I have taken it to the balcony so that it has fresh milk, that makes sense.

What I cannot say is that the cow knows how to make houses of cards »- the fragments are culled from

, the anthology published in 2019 by Blackie Books-.

It is very difficult for a comedian to jump into another generation.

Few transcend and he did

Joaquin Reyes

We go with

, another grandson, also on the Nuevo Alcalá poster: «It is very difficult for a comedian to make the leap to another generation, and he has done it. People tend to consume the humor of their time, few transcend. He succeeds, as the ideological exceeded: I also have a great -

aunt who said:

. He had a very beastly streak of black humor, very donkey. That monologue of the town festivals, of 'they have

son, but what we have laughed at', that's incredible, right? Then he was a melancholic, introverted guy, very restless ... I don't know, he was interested in rap, he didn't stop. He was one of the first to put high references into the redneck's mouth ... ».

Reyes likes to dive into the roots as a comedian of Gila, and there we have to listen again to the genius, who claimed heir to

... «It bores me the novel, but I am an enthusiast of the stories of Chejov, Pushkin, Borges, Cortázar, Mújica Laínez, Flannery O'Connor ... », he wrote.

"His thing was very serious," says Joaquín Reyes, also very serious, usually speaking of humor in his interviews.

The serious in the mouth of Gila.

The negative reverse of reality.

If

shows the absurdity of combat, he would call the enemy by phone: "Hey, we have few bullets, better not attack today."

The same, from another point of view.

As we are, debate: how would Gila laugh with these limits of correct politics today?

You will see that gibberish.

Contreras: «Well,

.

I would do the same".

Ignatius: "It is that this is not a current topic, it is always, and the limits are necessary to do comedy, to know which wall to push."

Ana Morgade: «That doesn't interest me, I think it interests people who don't know where the humor is.

For me, the limits of humor are when I make a joke and nobody laughs.

You cannot make a global tickle treaty: everyone has them where they have them.

He faced far greater limits of humor, a dictatorship no less, and emerged unscathed.

Jose Miguel Contreras

Valeria Ros

, also on the poster for

: «I think that today we have problems with that because there is a lot of humor that is easy, black, rough.

When a joke hurts, speaking of whatever it is, it is usually poorly constructed.

He would do the same, for sure.

Besides, he had suffered what he was joking about, that's why he had legitimacy.

JJ Vaquero

, also in the

: «This debate is on social networks, not in theaters.

Nobody in a theater has told me why I made that joke or this other one ».

We cannot leave without hearing what the bugger himself has to say about laughter, and about life, which we imagine will be something similar.

The fragment is culled, again, from

.

And it goes like this, let's engrave it on the head: «Solemnity is to blame for all human misfortunes.

.

Life passes in a heartbeat, let's not make it too serious a matter. "

Amen.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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