Marisol turns 75: the myth of Spanish cinema that chose between fame or being happy

Marisol, that blonde girl with angelic appearance and voice who filled Spanish movie theaters with iconic black and white images in the last years of Francoism, turns 75 this Saturday. The icon of what was the “fashion” of prodigy boys and girls, in a dark time of our history, little Pepa Flores was all light when she focused the camera on her. But she lived in a world of darkness that she nipped in the bud when she reached adulthood and after becoming a mother. She had also been an emblem of the transition, after appearing naked on the cover of Interviú magazine, declaring herself a communist and learning that she had suffered abuse throughout her career as a child and adolescent, made her bigger in everyone’s eyes. Fame and the unhappiness that the continuous public exposure caused him were radically left out of his life, which became almost anonymous in his native Malaga. Nothing and nobody has managed to return it to the red carpets and the headlines.

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Marisol was one of the first mass idols in Spain in the 1960s, when the population regularly went to movie theaters and television began to enter each of the houses in the country. the little one Josef Floreswho came into the world on February 4, 1948 in the coastal city of Malaga, was the daughter of a very humble family, she had a special grace to sing and dance flamenco and a rare beauty in Spain with dark skin, hair and eyes.

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Entering the choirs and dances of the female section of the Falange to give free rein to her art, put her in the focus of the producer Manuel Goyanes that in 1959, when he was 11 years old, he discovered her for the cinema with his first film, A ray of light. Since then, a non-stop of movies, like Cabrioladirected by mel ferrer, an angel has arrived, tombola, Marisol’s four weddings y Only the two, and prizes, as the best child actress at the Venice Mostra with only 12 years.

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All that the girl with the face of an angel touched was money, she came to have a doll with her image, and her activity was ferocious in trips and promotions. She succeeded in the US and even in Japan, and they wanted her for everything; television commercials, fashion shows or recordings with the most important orchestras. At the age of 15, she was diagnosed with an ulcer that we now know caused her stress.

At the age of 21, she married the son of her discoverer, Carlos Goyanesbut they divorced in 1972 and a year later she fell in love with the dancer Antonio Gades, Esteve with the real surname, whom he ended up marrying civilly in his beloved communist Cuba in 1982, and with whom he has had three daughters; the well-known actress Maria Esteve, Tamarawho is a psychologist and Celia, singer. The marriage separated in 1986.

When she was already a mother but still a benchmark in the Spain that would enter the democratic transition, she appeared naked on the cover of the emblematic magazine Interviú. She was running 1976 and her appearance looked like that of Liberty leading the Spanish people in the social revolution that this country was beginning just after the death of the dictator Franco.

He starred in Los días del pasado (1978), by Mario Camus, with her husband as a co-star, in what was the last job she did as Marisol, because she decided to change her stage name to her real name, Pepa Flores. She was also the star of Blood Wedding y Carmenby the Aragonese director Carlos Saura, y Case closed. ANDn 1984 he played the role of Mariana Pineda in the TV series Trial against Mariana Pineda.

In an interview with Interviú he did not tell what was known many years later; that she had suffered all kinds of abuse as a child and adolescent, which that Spain of public morality and darkness behind closed doors could not even imagine.

Pepa decided to be happy withdrawn in her apartment in La Malagueta or on her farm in Moclinejo, where she enjoys the garden and chickens. He does not grant interviews and a biography that had been proposed to him a few years before receiving the Goya de Honor 2020 from the Spanish Film Academy, in a ceremony held in Malaga, and that they went to collect his three daughters. As she had promised herself since the mid 80’s; she nothing to put on the lights again before and to step on red carpets.