• Anniversaries Gila, the absent-minded man from Madrid with an intense sentimental life who enjoyed all the millions he earned

  • Families The tragic present of the grandchildren of Cantinflas: disowned by their mother and in detoxification

Luck does not exist.

Life is a succession of cause and effect.

There are no good and bad.

This is how Gerard Jofra

(53)

thinks , the

eldest son that Eugenio

had with his first wife,

Conchita Alcaide,

with whom he would have another son, Ivens (50).

When the popular comedian

died at the age of 59

in 2001, something happened to the world.

He stopped.

And when he started, there were several debacles.

Economic crisis, real estate bubbles, the pandemic, the war... Throughout his existence,

the Catalan humorist

had been putting plasters on numerous social wounds that Gerard Jofra is going to try to continue applying every Friday at six in the afternoon in the

Aquitania theater in Barcelona.

His new show is

Eugeniadas by Gerard.

Gerard Jofra, eldest son of Eugenio. CEDIDA

After a long

process of mourning and falling into hell

to rediscover himself, Gerard wants to stop being "the son of...", "although I know it will be very complicated since in this new show they will not see to the same person that I was in Reugenio, although

the essence of my father will be there.

During the process of hitting rock bottom I put my relationship, my daughters, first, I fled because I didn't know what to do".

He is aware that

they will compare him,

but he has achieved a solution.

They say that his father was more amusing, well, good;

"Maybe yours laughed better", he replies with a mischievous smile.

Eugenio and his son Gerard, in a file image. CEDIDA

He inherited his ingenuity from his parents,

especially from his mother, who was an excellent singer while Eugenio was a jeweler.

Gerard even

worked in a pharmaceutical laboratory,

but he left because deep inside he knew he was good at telling jokes, as his friends told him.

It's what he has when he was two years old when his parents took him to Sausalito, the pub they bought with the proceeds from his performances, and

they put him on stage.

They always refused to hire a caregiver.

What is the hardest thing for you to achieve your own identity and independence? Six years ago I separated from my wife and for the last three I have been confined to find myself, believe in myself, overcome fears and be calm.

We live facing the outside and when I learned that you have to be comfortable in your own body I began to be happy and see the light.

The only thing I was doing for a long time was running away from my reality until I convinced myself to go on stage and not play my father.

I'll tell your three or four hardest jokes, but the rest are mine. Well, come on, explain one to us. Wow, I've been asked to do a forty-page dissertation on my sex life... well, I'm going to have to put a lot of straw. Tell us another, ha, ha. Mom, mom, I found a job at

Save me

.

Having studied, daughter. Is Eugenio's humor currently feasible with everything that is falling with #MeToo, #BlackLiveMatters, machismo....? Humor is a way of life and we have to see it from that point of view of sight.

We have to give ourselves the opportunity to tell a sexist, feminist, war joke... It's a kind of omeprazole that you take so that reality doesn't hurt you.

Humor is good for the head, so that we see life from another point of view.

My father always knew that in a performance you can't laugh at someone in particular, but at yourself.

You can say everything, but the important thing is how you say it. Eugenio would not have been what he is without his wife, Conchita Alcaide. She was an angel of light.

She was a great person who did not judge anyone,

a fighter and gave her life for a person with whom she was madly in love and whom she left with two very young children.

When she died of cancer, she was the reason why I was close to my father, she was my soul, my mirror... Life took my mother from me when I was 11 years old and I clung to my father like a limpet for emotional survival.

Before leaving, my mother gave her a mission: "I'm leaving, but take care of them."

He became a widower at the age of 37. He grew up well alongside him. His ingenuity caused me great pressure and a strong complex.

But I appreciate it.

At the age of 14, he accompanied him everywhere when he met with Gila, Mingote, Tip and Coll, Chumy Chúmez or Ussía.

He told me: "Sit down, shut up and listen."

What prodigious minds! What has been the best legacy of his father? The way of living, thinking and respecting.

These are values ​​that I have also tried to pass on to my daughters Andrea (21) and Blanca (18).

They are very critical of what I do and last summer they told me to move forward. And the money? The least I care about is that and fame.

Money is energy, you earn it from one place and lose it from another.

My father saw little.

They cheated on him.

Along with Arévalo, he was the one who sold the most cassettes, but they scammed him and the royalties did not arrive.

It is true that at that time he was the one who did the most performances, but then a manager came who aired everything and a woman came who separated him from everyone and I told him after seeing his girlfriends and lovers. Are we talking about Isabel Soto? Yes.

When he told me that he was marrying her I told him not to count on me.

I knew what she was coming for because she had previously ruined another man.

And I did not want to be part of all this.

I don't have anything against her and I don't want to judge her. It was said that she used drugs and that she carried out esoteric practices. Neither esotericism, nor was she wasted... For years I had to play the father, possibly Eugenio was a big boy.

Drugs did not appear in his life until he was 54 years old because after a first heart attack he became afraid, he found himself lost, he separated from his truth, he stopped believing in himself, he did not want to live and that woman appeared who became essential and broke up the family.

My father died of a heart attack, he told me how and when he was going to die, he met my daughter (his first granddaughter) and passed away. Few know that his father came to act before Cantinflas and Pinochet, how was the experience? lucky to live it on the spot.

My father performed at the Blanquita theater in Mexico City in the early 1980s and when it was over they told him that someone wanted to see him.

When the dressing room door opened, Mario Moreno 'Cantinflas' appeared, whom my father adored.

He was amazed when he greeted him, they exchanged a few words, he told him how much fun he had had and left.

And at the Viña del Mar Festival (Chile) my father was with Enrique García Vernetta [Rocío Jurado's manager and first love] in the dressing room when a captain or a general arrived and asked him not to tell a joke about the military because they had heard that discredited them.

My father told him that if what reached the troops was distorted, it was not his problem, that he did not ridicule anyone and that he told a reality with humor.

He kicked him out of the dressing room.

Vernetta thought that they would kill us there.

When he came out on stage he told the joke and I, who was behind the stage looking at the heads, saw Pinochet cracked up with laughter.

He congratulated him and nothing happened.

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