Laura Valenzuela, one of the pioneers of television, has died at the age of 92 this Friday, March 17. The real name of the mother of Lara Dibildos It was Rocío Laura Espinosa López-Cepero, but the general public will always remember her as Laura Valenzuela. She was one of the best-known faces on Spanish television at the beginning of it, back in 1956, which made her one of the most famous in the country.
It was in this environment that she met the man who would later become her husband and father of her daughter, the producer José Luis Dibildos, who died in 2002. With him she promoted her facet as an actress, but she soon returned to the small screen to play Joaquín Prat his perpetual artistic partner.
The most remembered program is galas on Saturday, and it was the one that prompted her to be the presenter of the only Eurovision festival held in Spain to date, in 1969, the year after the triumph of massiel as the winner of the contest. The Spanish Salome, tied with three other winners, she took the win.
Laura Valenzuela announced in 1971, when she was barely 40 years old, that she was retiring from the small screen to get married and focus on her family. A decision that today would be unthinkable but that in those years was very common. After her husband died, he returned to television and worked on various programs on Telecinco and TVE.
Withdrawn from public life for years, you live cared for by your daughter Lara Dibildos. Last year she suffered a health scare in 2022 and a week ago she was admitted for a urine infection but soon returned home after being discharged.
A wonderful life but with great disappointments
After being honored by Televisión Española with an award eleven years ago, she gave up all kinds of social life. Excellent presenter, attractive, elegant, tall, educated and with an incomparable natural sympathy, the Sevillian woman never had an Andalusian accent at least in the media. Not because she forced her voice but because her parents took her with them when she was a year old to Salamanca and other Spanish cities, including a time when they lived in a small French town.
At the age of seventeen, Rocío (she was not yet Laura) worked as a typist at the beginning of her working life, earning three hundred pesetas, a good salary in the postwar period, around 1948. She studied Commerce courses. She then entered a clothing store, where she worked as a salesperson and model. As her dependent, she is known for her anecdote with the Duchess of Alba, with whom she had an argument while her aristocrat was her client.
She was a model before an actress and presenter. Her beauty and stature allowed her to walk for brands in the early 1950s. It was then that she met José Luís Ozores (died 1968), the comedian of the famous film saga. It was he who recommended that she appear for some tests on that initial Spanish Television on Madrid’s Paseo de la Habana. We are in 1957. She was admitted as a presenter, not only because of her imposing presence but also because of her self-confidence and ability to improvise.
This is how the one who would become the mother of Lara Dibildos became one of the best-known faces in that Spain. Four years earlier she had made her film debut with a small role in the film The fisherman of couplets, starring none other than port Antonio Molina. The founder of Ágata Films told his son, José Luís Dibildos, to hire her. He made an appointment with her at his offices on the Gran Vía and from there he came up with the script for Anna says yes. It was a mutual crush.
Before the father of his daughter, only one pianist is known to whom he saw, and listened to, every day from the balcony of the house where he lived. José Luís Dibildos was one of the most important producers of the time. They were dating for thirteen years because he was separated from his first wife, and divorce under Franco was science fiction. José Luis and Laura lived their love at times in the house of Antonio Mingote, where he had a room at his disposal.
Laura became pregnant by Lara and Dibildos had to move to legalize their situation and marry her. They were finally married on March 27, 1971, in Illescas (Toledo), the same place where Julio Iglesias and Isabel Preysler celebrated their weddings.
Six months after the wedding, a girl was born who was baptized with the name of Lara because her parents had been hypnotized Doctor Zhivago, whose protagonist (actress Julie Christie) was called that.
Laura continued working after she was married, but José Luis preferred that she quit, which was not unusual at the time (quite the opposite). The producer asked her to leave her acting career and she obediently dedicated herself to the home and the upbringing and education of Lara. Jose Luis Dibildos he worked at night, writing his scripts, and sleeping during the day. She went to bed at seven in the morning, when Laura got up to start her daily work at home. They had no more children. Only 17 years after getting married, Dibildos relented and Laura was able to return to television.
Laura Valenzuela went through one of the most complicated moments of her life when in 1993 her daughter was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She was Lara 22 years old. She had surgery in Houston. Laura herself overcame another cancer, and she was also treated in Houston, overcoming breast cancer, in her case.
Between the two illnesses, José Luís Dibildos died of a myocardial infarction in 2002. He was 73 years old.
She has spent the last few years with her daughter, whose behavior towards her mother has been exemplary. Laura has been happy with her daughter and her grandchildren, now older: Fran, 24 (the result of her daughter’s marriage to basketball player Fran Murcia), and Alvaro, 15, (from the second marriage to the rider Muñoz Escassi). .