Lucía Veiga (A Coruña, 1979) She was already a well-known face in Galicia when in 2022 she made the leap to the national level by giving life to Norma in the series Rapa, a masseuse who treated the body of the protagonist, played by Javier Cámara. That role led her to win several awards: the Feroz for best supporting actress and the Mestre Mateo for female performance. Another recognition is that of the sector itself. It was so convincing that they have confessed to him that there are patients who can no longer stay calm on the stretcher. She says she has never been a great athlete. Now he reconciles with physical activity with a personal trainer whom he goes to every week.
At first, I don’t know what his relationship with sports will be, but I’m sure he could already be a masseuse for a team.
(Series). The truth is that to prepare the role of Norma in Rapa I had two coaches, especially one who is a lifelong friend of mine, and I found it amazing. Those muscles in our body that we don’t know, seeing how they are worked, how everything is related… The body is a whole, it caught my attention, I think I’m late to start in that branch, but wow! How important physios and osteopaths are in our lives. It gives me a lot of pride and satisfaction when someone comes up to me and tells me: You didn’t do anything wrong, because of you now people don’t relax when they are in the massage.
What was your relationship with sports like then?
I have not been particularly sporty, ever, but I think that because I did not find the sport in which I was comfortable. At school I liked volleyball. They put me in basketball, because I was tall, but I think I have a certain problem with contact sports. I don’t take well to being pushed or pressured and I can’t do it, so it doesn’t work.
And as an adult?
I have done other activities, but they don’t count as physical, like chess. Actually, I miss it because I am a person who quickly gets carried away with a sedentary lifestyle, but my body does sometimes demand it from me. I did traditional dancing and horse riding for a few years. A little more. I’m quite a botijo.
I’m quite a botijo
All individual sports. Is your profession, however, more team-based?
Absolutely, in fact, what resists me the most, what attracts my attention the least, are the monologues, and I think that is precisely why, because there is no team around, because you are alone and I enjoy the group feeling.
As a spectator, what sport do you like to watch?
I have streaks, I am a sports spectator, but I escape a lot from the sports industry. For example, I like football as a sport, but it disappoints me a lot as a business in general, and what it does to some people who watch it. The marketing, business, company part and how society sometimes becomes radicalized from something as beautiful as a sport, bores me very much. But I love watching football live. Actually I like to watch any sport alongside people who master it and who tell me about it. For example, mixed martial arts. Someone who doesn’t like it or doesn’t know it will think it’s just people messing around. But next to someone who controls, who tells me stories, anecdotes, makes me enjoy.
Do you admire any athletes?
I admire any athlete who sacrifices the rest of their life for that, as I can admire people who have children, who in the end sacrifice a lot of themselves. It seems to me that being an elite athlete, a professional athlete, means sacrificing other areas of your life. Normally the year there are Olympic Games and many more names come out, I always think about it, from the gymnasts, the swimmers, the tennis players… You see that they have turned sport into the driving force of their life, I find it tremendously admirable. Right now, Topuria, for example, seems like a person to study. I admire the philosophy he has when approaching sport.
“Now they tell me that I would have been a good athlete, but it’s too late”
He didn’t like contact in sports, but it seems that he likes contact sports.
It’s a recent thing by a couple of colleagues that amazes them and it’s very easy to convince me because I’m curious. I don’t hold back, I let people explain to me even if it’s something that doesn’t catch my attention and I come to understand and admire certain things. It’s happened to me with martial arts, these things that in 45 years I didn’t think I would come to like.
It is never too late, he already demonstrated it by starting with more than thirty years in acting, but is it too late for sport?
To start in sports, yes. And it makes me sad because curiously in the last two years that I have started with a personal trainer, to avoid this sedentary lifestyle, there are people around me who tell me that it is a shame because I have a very good muscular structure and that I would have been able to good sport. I am also very persistent, very stubborn and very disciplined. I believe that he would not have become an elite athlete, but perhaps he would have obtained some performance. Now I’m not going to mourn it, but I am at a point where I can at least introduce it as healthy leisure.
It is in theaters with ‘Soy Nevenka’, the story of the Ponferrada councilor who dared to denounce the mayor for sexual harassment. Now the same thing is happening in sports with the ‘It’s Over’ movement.
It is a global fight, a movement that will take us decades, and seeds have to sprout in different areas and sport is one of them. On the one hand, to achieve equality in terms of budgets, visibility, facilities, for institutions to put men’s and women’s sports on an equal footing. And on the other, to cut the attitudes to which we have been subjected for many years. I belong to a generation that grew up within machismo and in which all this was normal and that is now one of those that is fighting the most internally to erase those patterns and create new ones, and support the new ones so that hopefully they grow with another vision.
