“I like the way Elisabet Casanovas interprets me”

Although this Wednesday night was when the first episode of the series premiered on TVE The Lawyersbased on the life of Cristina Almeida and Manuela Carmelaits protagonists had already had the opportunity to watch some of these episodes.

From the San José Foundation, where she is recovering from a serious health problem that has kept her hospitalized for almost five months in the Ramón y Cajal Hospital after a back operation that led to an infection, Cristina Almeida confesses to me that she has already seen three episodesShe confesses that she was very interested in knowing how a story as hard as the one experienced in the 60s and with the murder of her colleagues at the law firm, a crime that she escaped because she was in Chile, would be adapted into a television series.

“I was very interested in seeing how this very difficult and painful story could be explained and how people could understand what happened.”says the criminal lawyer. For her, reliving those chapters means opening a wound that has never healed and a pain that will always be there.

Almeida is very grateful for the audience success of the first episode and is even more pleased when I tell her that the audience among the younger sector has been spectacular. As for the role that the actress Elisabet Casanovas plays, she is very sincere when she says that “I really liked it because I saw her with many of my traits. A cheerful and cheeky woman, that’s where I identify a lot”.

These days Cristina is participating in a documentary about those events and has also had the opportunity to interview the young actress, who is receiving such good reviews. “I love the young actors there are now, but I hope they don’t forget the older ones who are fundamental and just as important. Youth is great, but we must give work to the elderly, who are often forgotten.”Almeida claims minutes before starting a new rehabilitation session.

Interview

In her wheelchair and with a smile that could not fit on her face is how Cristina Almeida (Badajoz, July 24, 1944) received me in one of the garden areas of the San José Foundation in Madrid a few weeks ago. She has been here for more than Five months suffering in silence from the complications of a delicate back operation But she is strong and tough as a rock despite the pain and having celebrated her 80th birthday this summer in a room at the Ramón y Cajal hospital.

“My conclusion is that I have given everything I could in life, but not in a spirit of sacrifice, but voluntarily, because they have been wonderful experiences. That is why I have no regrets, but I am aware that now I can no longer contribute what people need and I have decided to stop and dedicate myself to myself,” he said honestly. “If I had to say what I have sacrificed, it would surely be my health because I have not taken much care of myself. But I assure you that I have been happy and I have done everything I wanted: even in the hardest moments, when the Atocha murders took place,” he recalled, about the crime narrated in the TVE series.