Alberto Rey
Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-02:20
Analysis Isabel Pantoja: her friend Mariló, like Encarna Sánchez, wears her hair like Lauren Postigo
Friendships This is Mariló, the mysterious close friend of Isabel Pantoja
Famous Isabel Pantoja: reasons for men and women to burn in her lit fire
Every time
a famous person pairs up
, makes enemies or associates
with another famous person
, we are aware that they are like us: they interact within
small circles
, they always go to the same places and, consequently, they always meet the same people.
In his case, with other celebrities.
Not Isabel Pantoja: she
chooses ordinary people
and invites them into her bubble of
fame
.
La Pantoja
has "normal" friends.
Or how normal someone is when they go from having an ordinary, even precarious, life to walking arm in arm with one of the most famous women in Spain.
The last one to join the select club of
Pantoja's friends
(not to be confused with a fan club... or yes) is called Mariló de la Rubia.
She already has, why deny it,
a star name.
And maybe, like Dulce Delapiedra, who started out as a nanny, she will become one.
"Join my side and there will be success," said Paquita Salas.
"
Join me and there will be covers,"
Isabel Pantoja could say.
Folkloric women
are a basic figure
in the Spanish imagination.
So are, in their own way, the peculiar and recurring
characters of his entourage.
We have the
"mother of folklorica"
, whose greatest exponent is, precisely, that of Isabel Pantoja and we
also have the squire,
half confidant and half servant, who in the
pantojil
universe would have the form of Agustín Pantoja.
Let's add to that a new character:
the "normal" friend
, half fan and half pet, with whom a woman who clearly
lives in a parallel reality
may establish a
bridge with the real world.
And a source of financing at a very low rate: the newsstand Loli, another of those chosen by Isabel Pantoja to enter
her circle
, left him
fleeced.
It was difficult for Lo
Li to recover the money
that she lent to the artist at the time.
A figure that, theoretically, should seem like pocket change
to a superstar like Isabel Pantoja
and that for her friend can represent the difference between living in peace and being very overwhelmed.
Isabel Pantoja in the 'Idol Kids' program in 2019GTRES
The one about the
overly generous newsstand
is one of the craziest chapters in the portrait of Isabel Pantoja's life that, with the help of
her two children, has been drawing for years:
the confinement in Cantora
(the most famous estate in Spain), their very rotten relationship with Paquirri's first family and a strange relationship with the fans who manage to access his nest, to whom he
assigns tasks
and imposes tributes.
In this delusional narrative, fans should feel rewarded with mere
proximity to their goddess
De ella.
If we did not know who Isabel Pantoja is, some stories about her ways and manners would lead us to think that the tonadillera is, above all, the guru of a cult,
the head of a sect
, the high priestess of a crazy religion that begins and ends in her.
In the fight for the
throne of their friendship,
many are called and few are chosen.
Of all of them,
only one, Dulce
, was about to become a celebrity on her own merits.
Along the way there were
nondescript women, like Pepi Valladares
, or those wonderful characters that are
Las Mellis
.
Sisters
Raquel and Bibi Rodríguez
also intermittently enjoy their little bit of attention.
They are attractive, they are
forward-thinking
and
there are two of them,
so theoretically they should have an advantage in this race
.
But
in Cantora you never know.
It is an unpredictable and very strange place.
It is Manderley Castle, where Enya lives, and the chocolate house where Hansel and Gretel were locked up.
At 67 years old, Isabel Pantoja remains, in many ways, an enigma.
Her romantic history,
official and unofficial,
shows no clear pattern
.
She can't even be deciphered
by her
"normal" friends .
And no, I'm not going to stop writing it in quotes: being friends with Pantoja is the least normal thing in the world.
The twins Raquel and Bibi RodríguezGTRES
There are many stories, countable or not, about
folkloric women
and their male companions, homosexual or not.
From the
"leva faggot"
with which the arrival of
a diva of the copla
and her faithful troupe to a venue was announced, to funny anecdotes about
jesters fallen from grace
or sucking from the boat for decades.
Like Georgina's gang of killers but changing Dubai for Triana and Ekseption for the Mayte Commodore.
There is, however, not
so much mythology of best friends,
of normal friends (sorry: "normal"), of newsstand workers, babysitters, drivers or, simply, ladies to whom Pantoja
said come and they left everything.
Nor can we blame those ladies for having succumbed to the
pantojo spell
because, to begin with, articles like the one you are reading now show that they are not the only ones.
We have been fascinated by a woman
for four decades
who
has never liked us
.
She is a fundamental figure in painting the picture of this country's pop culture and also one of the
least interesting celebrities
who have ever existed.
Why are we obsessed with her?
Maybe we should ask
those "normal" ladies
who have been able to enter their world and have lived to tell the tale.
And some, like Loli the newsstand,
also to pay for it.