Almost a century of Spanish history, and perhaps the entire world, can be herded together

in a plate of tavern eggs from a certain Lucio

.

Kings and bullfighters, marquises and ministers, courtiers, hustlers, singers and sheikhs from all over the world have inserted their important snouts into this concoction of Iberian essences: because

eating some fried eggs from the most famous bartender of all time already has ritual features. castizo

, sacrosanct, obligatory.

Like going to the Prado Museum and seeing the petticoats of Las Meninas.

Like choking on the 12 grapes every December 31st.

Like a lap around the ring at five in the afternoon.

Lucio Blázquez is scratching years off a life with so many seams that they would barely fit in this interview.

But here we go.

He has been about to die three times

("once due to the covid, another thing hit me in the belly on a plane and the ambulance had to come to the stairs, and another when I almost drowned on the beach, in Alicante; a another minute and I won't count it").

And with that kind of luck of the chosen ones -

"like me only one is born every century"

, Lucio repeats the same mantra as Lola Flores -, next February 12 he will be 90 years old.

His white jacket, another 'classic'.

- Shall we take stock, teacher?

-What I have achieved worldwide I do not believe it or me.

And everyone who has passed through here, from the highest president of the United States to the last neighbor down the street, has done so thanks to my public relations.

Let's see who the hell gets that.

And although I haven't stopped working, if I die tomorrow, I'll leave happy.

Don Juan Carlos, the emeritus, always tells me: 'You have lived better than a king'

.

As every day, Lucio arrives at number 35 of the Cava Baja after noon, where he eats at the round table on the right, behind a screen in front of the bar.

Before he also alternated in those dinners that have given so much of themselves in the most tavern tavern of all taverns.

But age is weighing and there are no longer late nights

.

In those after-dinner meals there is never a lack of friends with whom to pull the thread of nostalgia, have a toast, close a deal.

Or customers who greet you like a superlative celebrity.

Lucio attends to them affable and, nevertheless,

regal as the bust of a town emperor

, attentive to his domain, waiting for everything to go as it should in this restaurant that is already a chronicle in itself.

«I can take 100 photos a day with people»

, he explains while he waits for one of the pots that have given him worldwide fame to be brought to him.

"The eggs, which are fresh, from hens raised on the ground in a corral in Ávila, had been forgotten in Spain," he claims.

«People did not leave the house to eat a fried egg and dip bread.

It was a poor dish, reviled.

And now they go crazy.

The potatoes below, the eggs on top.

You destroy them, the stars... and that's it.

It is something so simple, so resounding, so ours, that it cannot fail

.

And what about the calluses?

Now that is an unbeatable dish.

I eat tripe three times a week.

Bill Clinton and don Juan Carlos, with Lucio.

-And how are we doing with cholesterol?

Let's see if we're going to have a scare...

-I have the analyzes of a child.

Lucio's word.

As in an archeology lesson, the first outlines of his legend begin in the squalor of Caba Baja -today Madrid's flashy artery in the hipster neighborhood of La Latina-

at the end of the 30s of the last century, so far away

.

"It was a street that had nothing, but very funny," recalls Lucio.

His father, the mayor of Serranillos (Ávila), had made him accompany him to the Rastro many Sundays, where they bought trinkets that they later sold in town.

(Small note: «My father was so handsome that the ladies applauded him when he left mass»).

Seeing the boy's self-confidence among the looting of the people of the Villa,

he sent him at the age of nine to the capital to find his life .

.

And in Doña Petra's Mesón Segoviano, Lucio finds his first job.

«He scrubbed, ran errands, came, went... Everything.

Petra loved me like a son.

'Lucito, do this.

Lucito, do the other...'.

She earned a salary of one peseta, but in tips she took me 10 times more

».

That canteen skill, that girl eager for the future,

that postwar hunger for a goal made the businesses on the street raffle it off

.

"They all wanted to buy me," she says.

And that's how that boy grew from tavern to tavern, from restaurant to restaurant, from booth to booth,

until he ended up, once again, in the same Hostal Segoviano that she would end up buying from Doña Petra in 1974

.

With Julio Iglesias, "like a brother".

After many uncertainties, it

was Fernando Fernán-Gómez who cleared up all doubts about the new name and the new directions of the business

: «I am not going to the cinema to see Mario Moreno, I am going to see Cantinflas.

And I'm not going to have dinner at the house of a deceased Segovian.

I'm going to have dinner where Lucio takes care of me».

So be it then.

«The day before opening my father was scared to death.

He wondered: 'What if no one comes?', explains his daughter Mari.

The next day, Casa Lucio was full.

Who knows if because of Lucio, who knows if because of the eggs,

that Cava Baja inn became the muscle of Spanish social life

, an extension of Congress, a mini-Hollywood beyond the seas.

"Adolfo Suárez ate almost exclusively French omelette, very strong coffee and the nicotine of countless cigarettes," recalls Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa in the memoirs of this unrepeatable innkeeper.

«On the contrary, it seems that

the best client was an ethereal and delicate creature, not at all suspected of such voracity: Claudia Cardinale

».

The actress became Lucio's ambassador in Hollywood.

Well, famous is the night that a taxi stopped in front of street number 35, Rock Hudson opened the door and said: "Liz Taylor told me that Claudia Cardinale told her that the food here is very good."

Blessed mouth to mouth

.

"If these walls could talk, half of the Transition was forged here,"

explains the journalist Rosa Villacastín.

"There was such a mix of people that you came one night and you already had the chronicle done."

Antonio and Rafael, known as Los del Río and Lucio's friends since the beginning of time, go back to those first bars: «

That was true Madrid.

The street lighting was very poor, there were some rats like rabbits

, one sold ceramics a little further up, another had an esparto grass shop...».

Aznar, Rajoy, don Juan Carlos, González and Zapatero.

-And what about the parties that were formed?

Because many eggs and potatoes, but...

-It was a fantastic atmosphere.

Here you could meet King Juan Carlos after dinner

, I would tell two jokes, and he would go and tell four.

And so until so many.

Although Lucio has been the host of all royalty, the emeritus has been one of his most illustrious guests.

In these very Madrid dining rooms

, Don Juan Carlos has thrown a thousand and one nights of campechanía

, as the sports journalist Pepe Domingo Castaño recalls.

«He Once he was waiting for the king of Norway to have dinner, but he was late.

Impatient, his majesty rose and he began to walk between the tables.

When he saw me, he stopped and told me: 'These kings are fucking tardy' ».

-And you, Don Lucio, are you still talking to Don Juan Carlos?

-Yes, often.

We were recently chatting.

From that friendship forged so many decades, Lucio could unleash my and anecdotes.

Like when Juan Carlos, Simeón from Bulgaria and Lucio himself went out into the street from the restaurant, late at night,

and a "chop" tried to steal their wallets in the shadows of the Cava Baja

.

With Leonardo DiCaprio.

-And what does Julio Iglesias say, that he has abandoned us?

-

He calls me almost every month

.

Now he is a little low, but he loves me like a brother.

It's just that we've been

partying

our whole lives.

-And what about the eggs at two in the morning?

-If he was ever giving a concert in the Netherlands, for example, he would call me and say: 'I arrive in Madrid at two, have my eggs ready'.

The eggs... and the sirloin, which he loves

.

-How about Doña Letizia?

I don't know if she will be very callous...

-She's very pretty.

-You have alternated more with Queen Sofía, of course...

-Is fantastic.

Recently, already separated from don Juan Carlos, she gave me a brooch with a coat of arms of the Royal House.

But I don't wear it because

I don't like to show off

.

This Atleti pin [Lucio smiles, pointing to his lapel] was given to me by the players 50 years ago, paid for out of his own pocket.

Platinum, gold and diamonds.

And maybe that pin sums up Lucio's best kept secret.

A mattress maker

from head to toe, he has seated all the colors of football at his table.

Madridistas led by Santiago Bernabéu who were followed by Maradona, Pelé...

And here goes the million dollar question:

-Are the fried eggs more left-wing or right-wing?

-Here there have been hugs from one side and from the other.

Fraga, Felipe González, Suárez... And Santiago Carrillo

, who politically had nothing to do with me, told me things about him, important things.

And he told me with great nobility.

Let's see who gets that.

what was said

Lucio's eggs.

A GREAT TRIBUTE

Lucio says that he has been "the best ambassador of Spain throughout the world."

And his photo album, which runs through the walls of his restaurant like an art gallery of unreachable celebrities, is the best example.

There is his pantheon of Hollywood actors or leaders (from Bill Clinton to the famous dinner of Don Juan Carlos with all the living presidents of Democracy (Aznar, Rajoy, Felipe González and Zapatero). And so, taking advantage of his imminent 90th birthday, the different hoteliers of the Cava Baja will pay tribute to him this Tuesday, which will be attended by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida.In addition to unveiling a commemorative plaque at the door of Casa Lucio, during the next month the different bars and restaurants of the neighborhood will reinterpret -and serve- the mythical fried eggs.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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