Emilio Aragón: "It is healthy to look back from time to time"

• INTERVIEW Carmelo Gómez: "Madrid has a billion corners, no wonder people lose their minds over it"

• THEATER Madrid, capital of musicals

"I consider myself a lucky person."

(Havana, Cuba, 1959) not only shows it physically - a perennial smile, relaxed movements - but also verbalizes it.

and, although he defines himself as a "musician" first of all, it is impossible to talk about his career without remembering his successes as a clown, comedian, actor, director,

, producer , screenwriter, composer, businessman ... With his new project,

, has had to do an exercise of introspection and remember the stories that his longed-for father told him about his artistic desires, which has led to a tribute to "that generation of artists and comedians to whom my father and my uncles belonged. , which I continue to admire. " And you are not alone in your work.

to meet again with the characters and the soundtrack of their childhood in a show that will remain until mid-January at Ifema, Feria de Madrid.

If, as you say, "one lives from dreams". What do you do with nostalgia? I'm one of those who thinks it's good to look back, but not continuously. I, in particular, am one of those who lives in the present and likes to look to the future. But it is healthy to look back from time to time, to see what we have done, what we miss ... Because it is inevitable that there are things that are missed and also ask ourselves the question of why we miss it. Is that where your latest show somehow comes in? Yes. It led me to see how my grandchildren [

,

and

] they ask me for their grandfather's songs; hearing my children's friends say that they play my father's songs for their children. I find it incredible that they are still there. I am struck by the fact that even parents in their early thirties put my father's videos on them, some even in black and white, and the children see them! I think that, in some way, the public misses that work of actors, of comedians, who felt flesh and blood. Perhaps in other times it was more common and now it is not so much. That job is missed. And then there is also the fact that, after the first

,

,

and

, from Productores de Sonrisas, ask me to do something else. And since the first one was a tribute to my great-grandparents,

and

, this one was clear that he wanted it to be a tribute to my father. The thing is that the whole pandemic came, all the mess and we had to stop. emotions. And above all recover, rescue. The title

it has to do with the stories my father used to tell me. He would literally tell me, referring to him and my uncles: "We dreamed of theaters. We lay on the floor, in bed and thought about what the dressing rooms of the stages we were going to visit were going to be like, where we were going to perform, the cities we were going to visit. We were going to meet ... we dreamed of it. " I was the fourth generation of a family dedicated to the circus, and the passion we had for what we wanted to do was still intact. And hence the

, because it is real that my father dreamed of these things. Is it an added responsibility to awaken the illusion and fantasy of the little ones at Christmas? It is. But we have to vindicate the dream. Without going any further, this morning I was watching a video of

on YouTube and casually they let him know "And what do you do every day" and he replied "I dream. I dream every day". He was sitting at the piano and they asked him "What do you mean?" and he would say "yes" and he would start playing: "Now I'm dreaming." That is the idea. Claiming the ability, the possibility, to be able to dream every day seems to me to be very important. Let the dream be the engine to be happy. "You have to work to be happy," you assured in an interview. Exactly. And do you consider that we are approving or failing in the endeavor? We have to try. For now we have to continue studying to pass [laughs].

Every time the director of

and

sees a photo or video of

the lives of circus artists of the mid-twentieth century come to mind. In the middle of the Productores de Sonrisas marquee, next to the mouse that will end up belonging to Susanita, in an atmosphere that invites us to sing

to the full, Emilio Aragón looks back and remembers that time of continuous changes, of mixtures of environments and sensations, all of them positive. The one in which a child asked his father "

, after having lived in Mexico, Caracas, Miami, Chicago or Buenos Aires.

If your family already met every night to comment on what they expected the next day, I don't want to imagine what it would be like at Christmas ... I fondly remember Christmas because you have to understand that in the 60s and 70s there were Spanish products that was impossible to achieve. It was a time when there were no mobiles, there was no internet ... then, of course, ham, loin, cheese, you couldn't get them because of trichinosis and so on. They were not exported. Olive oil was difficult to find, as well as very expensive ... A Spanish beer was impossible. So, Christmas was the time when my parents did everything at home. Even the marzipan. My father and a Spanish friend he had in Chicago rented an apartment, bought some machines and made chorizo ​​... Or something similar to chorizo ​​and sobrasada. The neighbors would not be very happy...You can imagine what happened, the whole building ended up smelling like sausage! They left him hanging and the neighbors above, those below protested [laughs]. At that time people lived a lot in the kitchen and it was a way of experiencing Christmas very much around it. I have a very nice memory of that. In addition, he lived Christmas in different countries of America, right? Things as different as the holidays in Chicago, with a terrible cold, or what I lived in San Juan de Puerto Rico, with a awesome heat. There we did what they call the assaults: we went from house to house singing what they called the aguinaldos, which are Christmas songs. Christmas at home was, and is, very important.the ones below [laughs]. At that time people lived a lot in the kitchen and it was a way of experiencing Christmas very much around it. I have a very nice memory of that. In addition, he lived Christmas in different countries of America, right? Things as different as the holidays in Chicago, with a terrible cold, or what I lived in San Juan de Puerto Rico, with a awesome heat. There we did what they call the assaults: we went from house to house singing what they called the aguinaldos, which are Christmas songs. Christmas at home was, and is, very important.the ones below [laughs]. At that time people lived a lot in the kitchen and it was a way of experiencing Christmas very much around it. I have a very nice memory of that. In addition, he lived Christmas in different countries of America, right? Things as different as the holidays in Chicago, with a terrible cold, or what I lived in San Juan de Puerto Rico, with a awesome heat. There we did what they call the assaults: we went from house to house singing what they called the aguinaldos, which are Christmas songs. Christmas at home was, and is, very important.with a terrible cold, or what was experienced in San Juan de Puerto Rico, with an impressive heat. There we did what they call the assaults: we went from house to house singing what they called the aguinaldos, which are Christmas songs. Christmas at home was, and is, very important.with a terrible cold, or what was experienced in San Juan de Puerto Rico, with an impressive heat. There we did what they call the assaults: we went from house to house singing what they called the aguinaldos, which are Christmas songs. Christmas at home was, and is, very important.

Emilio Aragón, on a "a little cold" Christmas in Ávila.

In 1983,

, Emilio Aragón was already at the helm of the program Neither live nor live of La 1. He wrote, directed and acted and was nominated for the Emmy Awards.

Successes such as

in Canal Sur would later come;

,

and

on Telecinco or

on Antena 3, successes that ended up paling when compared to their passage into fiction: the nine seasons of Family Doctor, with its

.

But before, in 1977, when he assumed the role of

in

and made official the premiere of a new generation of artists from the Aragón family, he had to do a little-recognized exercise of constriction:

.

When I listen to him, as a canary, a question arises ... How did the zeta enter his life? I speak with that one at home.

And now that I know you are a Canary, I'm going to talk to her.

[From this moment, she takes control of her words] I had to incorporate the zeta in some way for television.

It was

[laughs]. I can attest that it has a lot of merit. My two older sisters and I were born in Cuba.

And my little sister was born in the United States.

And my mother is Cuban, so at home or when I'm alone with her,

[Cuban expression used to define who makes a scandal with their rude or gossipy attitude] And now that you say about the Canary Islands, I have to say that the Canarian accent is very similar to Cuban in many things. There is a mixture there between the Cuban and the Venezuelan ... But I have a wonderful memory of the islands. When we premiered one of the

in Tenerife

, I remember what the manager of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra,

, told me

, a barbarian guy: "Hey, now after the premiere, what do you want? Do you prefer a good restaurant or some arepitas?" Aaaay! We went to eat some arepitas with a Reina beer. The oil fell through my mouth with the arepita ... Every time I go, I feel at home. And the accent has a lot to do with that, because, as I told you, I came here when I was 14 years old. And when I go to Miami, which is where my entire Cuban family is now, you can imagine. From house to house and from party to party. They take out the suckling pig, the rice and beans ... And looking to the future, do you plan to recover Captain Bebo, the protagonist of the stories he tells to his grandchildren, who call you that? I did not think that anyone would ask me that, but the truth is that it is something that has been in my head for a long time.You know why? Because my grandchildren ask me to. And, in addition, they tell me "I drink, you have to do more stories." Because of course, they know it by heart. So i'm thinking of doing

, but in the flesh.

It seems to me that it is an idea that can be very interesting and that I would enjoy a lot.

A father's dream

"It is wonderful to be able to count on these three geniuses who have me speechless: David, Bruno and Aaron, with whom we have the third generation of a family of artists, the Ullates," says Emilio Aragón proudly at the presentation of

show that seeks to bring out the inner child of each attendee, either with its cast of prestigious international artists or with those "quirky and half-crazy" characters, such as the mythical

and

. "It has been an emotional journey. With which the lump in my throat has been put on more than one occasion, "he confesses.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

See links of interest

• Last News

• What

• 2022 business calendar

• Christmas Lottery 2021

• Search for Christmas lottery number

• Check Christmas Lottery

• Covid passport

• Holidays 2021

• Loteria del Niño 2022

• Juventus - Malmö FF

• Zenit St Petersburg - Chelsea

• Spain - Japan, live

• Atalanta - Villarreal

• Benfica - Dynamo Kyiv