Eduardo Alvarez

Updated Wednesday, February 7, 2024-21:31

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This Saturday,

Valladolid hosts

the 38th edition of the

Goya Awards

ceremony , the most coveted awards in Spanish cinema. And there is something miraculous about the fact that this awards ceremony has continued

for so long,

also arousing increasing

expectations,

if we remember that

the first gala was chaotic

and that very few industry personalities trusted then that it could establish itself as a

great showcase

of the seventh national art in the style of the Hollywood Oscars, although in a much more modest version.

Those first Goya were celebrated

on March 17, 1987

at the Lope de Vega theater in Madrid. And they were the only ones who had

the assistance of the Kings of Spain,

the then monarchs

Juan Carlos I

and Sofia. In fact, among the anecdotes of the night it stands out that the current Emeritus

received the first big head in history,

the so-called zero award.

Don Juan Carlos and Doña Sofía, at the 1987 Goya Awards. The King receives the Goya of Honor from the hands of José María González Sinde.Efe

In the middle of the ceremony, which was

broadcast by TVE,

the 41 artists and technicians nominated in that debut of the Awards - many fewer candidates than today - took the stage, where

they supported the Kings

. And there, the director

José María González Sinde,

the first president of the Film Academy, presented Don Juan Carlos with an honorary Goya, the work of Miguel Berrocal, which

weighed about six

and a half kilos, and which at that time had a strange device that, when pressed, caused a small filming camera to rise above Goya's head. The King came to the theater in an

impeccable tailcoat

and Doña Sofía wore

an elegant and sober light blue dress

, very much in her characteristic style. At the time of receiving the bobblehead, the sovereigns were surrounded by stars such as

Sara Montiel and Emma Penella.

Queen Letizia attends the Scorsese and Cortés dialogue at the Film Academy in Madrid

It is not known if because of how much

the Monarch was bored

during the ceremony, according to gossip, or exactly why, from

that year on Zarzuela declined the invitation

of the Academy, which goes to the Palace every year to convene the Royal Family to the big night of the cinema. In other monarchies, such as the United Kingdom, it is usual for

the Windsors to be present

at each edition of the Baftas. Prince William, heir to the throne, has been in fact president of the British Film and Television Academy since 2010.

Here,

the exception

occurred in 2000, when the then

Prince Felipe attended

the XIV Goya gala. He still remembers how he had to be shy when Pedro Almodóvar asked the audience

to sing

Happy Birthday

to the heir, who was blowing out 32 candles.

Like Kings,

Don Felipe and Doña Letizia have never attended

the ceremony. But in 2014 they received

an honorary Goya

from producer Enrique González Macho, then head of the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences,

this one without the strange device that incorporated the first bobblehead mentioned above. And that award

placed on a sideboard

in the Zarzuela Tapestry Hall has witnessed all this time the

countless visits

that the King has received to dispatch, in compliance with his constitutional functions.

The question, currently unanswered, is

when the cinephile Queen Letizia will parade

down the long Goya carpet.