The actress Lydia San Jose He picks up the phone and almost immediately envy invades us. It is in Mexico at twenty degrees, but the thermal sensation is greater. From there you will see the second season premiere on April 20 the pillars of time (RTVE), the documentary series that he presents together with eleanor martin in which they x-ray the most impressive monuments in Spain.
[El programa de historia de Leonor Martín y Lidia San José: “Hernán Cortés mató a su mujer y no se cuenta”]
“I arrived in Mexico not long ago, I really wanted to return, The pillars It’s been many months”, she confessed to magasIn, although she added that what she likes the most is working and she considers herself lucky to be able to live off “what I like the most in the world”.
In this second season of the documentary series we will see more adventure, “we have learned because in a first season you are always discovering and now we have caught the thread”.
[Quién es Lidia San José, la actriz invitada a ‘Pasapalabra’ (a la que conocemos desde pequeña)]
He tells us that in this new installment there is a chapter dedicated to a woman and more personified chapters. Although if there is an episode that fascinates him, it is the one dedicated to the prehistory, “for the first time we approached the origins of the human being”. In addition, they have recorded in places steeped in history such as the caves of Maltravieso, Atapuerca, the Burgos area…
They started shooting in November, although there was preparation before that. Lidia San José arrived in Spain at the end of October and the recording lasted until mid-March, as there were incidents caused by the weather that could not be avoided.
[Cuenca será protagonista de una serie documental de RTVE]
In addition, they took a break in December for a month and a half “because we couldn’t record with the Christmas decorations and of course, since we do outdoors we couldn’t”. He also says that the program “takes a lot of post-production because everything with the scanner is very laborious. So, once the programs are in place and everything with the scanner is there, that’s when we have to go back to voice over.”
The support of Leonor Martin
This new season, the actress and historian Lidia San José returns to work with the actress and architect Eleanor Martin.
“For me Leo is a gift that I take with me for life from this profession. It is the best thing that has happened to me. This season has been hard, obviously, but the first one was very hard because it is a complex job. You always do it outdoors , recording in spring, in winter… With the climatic conditions that this entails. So it’s quite hard,” he says.
And he continues: “Filming is hard and very tiring because you have a day to finish a monument and you have to finish it yes or yes. You don’t look at the clock, you have to finish. The whole team is very tired, which means that due to stress I don’t have your best mood and Leo and I have not had the slightest friction (and I have character)”.
She speaks of her as anyone would speak of her best friend: “Leo is a support for me. When you have a bad day because you are not happy with how something has turned out or you consider that something has been unfair, she is a support. Also, in this profession we often sin from egos and being an actor is not an easy career. If you are there it is because you like to be seen. Well She is the person with the least ego I have ever met in my life. Is fantastic. She’s very cool, very smart, very consistent. We get along very well.”
He also talks about all the people behind, who cannot be seen and gives their all, “there is a fantastic team”.
Curiosities, learning and unique experiences
In this project, the historian and actress has learned a lot. One of the things that most caught her attention is that when she was in a Bronze Age necropolis with the paleoanthropologist Juan Luis Arsuaga, he told him that most of the deceased there were bodies that had lactose intolerance.
“And it is that the human being was intolerant to lactose, but developing agriculture and livestock, having a food like milk provided many nutrients, helped a lot in sedentary life and served to feed more population. Those who were began to survive lactose tolerant and those were the genes that were passed on. Hence most people are lactose tolerant,” she says.
In addition, thanks to the program, he has been able to see certain sites from another perspective: “There are many things that you already know and others that you see from another perspective because you see the sites with the greatest experts in the area.”
Among the things that “fascinated” him is also the Prado Museum and how the restoration and the eight-person team that make up ‘the Prado brigade’ work there: “They are the only ones who can move the paintings, I had no idea.”
“The truth is that this program is a gift for us. It is as if they paid you for vacations. We work a lot, but it is true that you get some gifts like being able to be in the Prado Museum with the museum closed,” she points out.
The woman in history
We can’t help but ask if the show’s hosts, being two women, are seeing history in a different way. “Of course, don’t have any doubt about that, because we are both women and feminists and we have a vision with a gender perspective“.
He explains that there are things that cannot be fought for, but others can, because also “we are very critical and have a lot of class consciousness.”
She remembers asking in the first season, when they told her about a place where cavemen worked, if the women had also worked there. “Then it doesn’t always remain in assembly, you have to cut, but women must be restored to their place in history“.
Even she on Instagram shares women’s stories. Remember that one day she uploaded the poster of an exhibition that took place in 2012, art without artists. The cover was the Altamira caves, but painted by a woman.
“It is always taken for granted that they were men and there is no proof. It is known that where they put their hands, due to the size, they are women. But really there is no idea if the bison were painted by men or women. The place we are in history is taken for granted thanks to men.”
Third season?
Will there be a third season? It is not known, but Lidia San José would love it. “Spain is not a very large country in terms of area, but we have a fascinating history and a number of monuments that people are unaware of”.
Among the places he would like to visit, he gives us an example of the Sagrada Familia. “There are times when permits are complicated.”
“We are also missing all the islands, we are missing Ceuta and Melilla, the old one is spectacular. We still have a lot of history to cover. Spain has a spectacular history and then if we managed to go to the territories that belonged to Spain, well imagine what it would be like. It is that the Netherlands was Spain, we are no longer talking about the American continent, but about Europe, “he says.
And he continues: “The cathedral of Majorca is spectacular, we are missing Murcia, the wall of Ávila… There are monuments to do without leaving the peninsula, but I think it is time to start taking flights too because Spain is much more”.
He would also love to do a chapter on theaters and more characters, for example, by Teresa de Jesús. “There are historical figures that seem very interesting to me, I go towards women, for example, Juana de Castilla. They are less studied and when we think, male names always come to mind, when history could not have been made without us”.
From your point of view: “We must review history to give women the place that corresponds to us“.
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