The football career of Richy Castellanos (Madrid, 1968) was truncated due to an injury. “Like Antonio Banderas and Julio Iglesias, only they know them in Hollywood and me in my house,” he jokes. Then began to to organize events And so it has been for 27 years.
In all this time he has been the shadow of many national and international celebrities and has remained in a discreet background, although his friend Santiago Segura has taken him out in several of the films of the Torrente saga and José Mota also had him for the last New Year’s Eve on TVE. He published a book together with the humorist Eloy Arenas entitled ‘The man who whispered to the famous’ (Planet) and has organized, since 1992, the charity party between bullfighters and artists.
He’s a very serious guy; also very discreet. Of those who only know how to speak well of others. All the familiar names that come up in the conversation are, he says, friends of yours. Maradona, Julio Iglesias, Cristiano Ronaldo, Paco de Lucía, Camarón, Vicente Amigo, Antonio Banderas, Raúl González Blanco… At the end of the interview, in case we have any doubts, he gives us several voice audios so that we can verify that he is not lying. “Please put the headline ‘Richy loves Julio Iglesias’,” he asks. There are better phrases, but for the record.
QUESTION. He has been working for almost three decades and I still don’t really know how to define him. Public relations, event organizer, achiever?
REPLY. I am a person who came out of my mother’s womb, I looked for beans in my own way, as Sinatra says in the song, and one day I decided to be a footballer. But since it was impossible for me to reach the first division, I dedicated myself to show business. I think the most appropriate thing to define myself is an event organizer, because there are many public relations and I don’t smoke, I don’t drink and I’m an athlete. Brands and artists trust me, so my job is to make magic for them to repeat.
Q. In addition to confidence, is it essential to be discreet?
R. Look, yesterday I was going to the theater to see three friends, Florentino Fernández, Santiago Segura and José Mota, and Julio Iglesias called me. Usually he calls me on Christmas Eve and I call him on New Year’s Eve, and he told me that he was a generous and caring person, and that he loves me very much. I was very excited, he is an icon, a genius. In addition to trust, it takes kindness and transparency to continue in this profession.
P. It is impressive the list of celebrities for whom you have worked. Who has made him mute, for better and for worse?
R. The best thing to do with the bad is to let it go, they themselves portray. But for the better, my good friend Diego Armando Maradona, whom I have been crying for a long time, because he left very soon and he should not have left that way, only at the moment when he should have been more wrapped up. I didn’t have time to say goodbye to him. I want to make a documentary about him for next year. We will go to Naples with his son, to Barcelona with Julio Alberto, to Seville with Curro Romero, Espartaco and Monchi, to Argentina with their daughters and to Dubai. Another fundamental man for me has been another who is not here, Paco de Lucía. A man before whose bone structure you already stuttered. Called me Old cock.
Q. Is that a compliment?
R. He gave nicknames to all the people close to him. He called his brother Pepe Pelleja, Antonio Vargas Cortés he called El potito, Raimundo Amador he called Cantinflas and so on. When he spoke, we all shut up. Both Diego and Paco knew that I always give and never ask.
Q. How do you live with the feeling that some will always approach you out of interest, because of your agenda, through the doors that you can open for them?
R. Well, I know the biographies of all the singers in this country from A to Z and I have their contacts, it could be a reason. But I am quite intuitive and I know who is coming forward and if we are compatible or if they intend to amaze me, something that I doubt that I will achieve. I’m not saying I’ve seen it all, but almost. I have been with rich, poor, artists, neighbors, friends, in the best houses and in the worst. And it has helped me to move on.
Q. You tried to convince me that you can earn a living at night without giving yourself a bad life …
A. Sure it is. Like I said, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t even drink coffee, just Cola Cao. Look, at night everyone is brown cats and if you do one thing the rest do the same, you lack personality. But I have a greater force with me, the Barbas, which is God. When I go to events, which lately I only go to my own, I am always with wide eyes, and there are people who at this point still see me as if I were a strange being. But my conscience is very clear. I have God, Jesus and my family.
“I am intuitive and I know who is coming forward and if we are compatible or if he intends to amaze me, something that I doubt he will achieve”
Q. I’d like to talk to you about fame. Do you think it has changed for the worse or is it me getting older?
A. I always say that the stars crash. The magazines feature Julio Iglesias on the cover but also Pepito Pérez, and that is the last straw for readers. Not everything goes to sell more. But if you are the boyfriend of the girlfriend of the bride of the groom and on top of that you think you are Marlon Brando, and when you call him it turns out that he does not pick up the phone because he has a secretary, then turn off and let’s go. And I don’t say more so as not to get where they don’t call me.
P. I am funny about the secretary. Do you think that artists today have professionalized their environment too much? A bit like politicians …
R. I have always said that before the artists spoke directly with journalists, but things have progressed down that path and I think they are wrong. The best way to survive in this world is speak directly, not surrounding yourself with people you pay so they don’t call you or bother you.
Most of the ones up today are disposable. As Pedro Ruiz says: you turn on the light and the flies arrive, you turn it off and they leave. If the artist has a head and eyes wide open, he should realize that perhaps he does not need a representative, a secretary, a masseuse or a security … These are Hollywood things, but in Spain very few are really known on the five continents: Penelope Cruz, Julio Iglesias, Banderas, Alejandro Sanz, Iker Casillas … If you let others speak for you, maybe they don’t know how to sell you as you deserve. The important thing in the show is not how you start, but how you end.
Q. What are you up to now?
R. I have just done a wonderful project together with Enrique Heredia, el Negri, for the Atlético de Madrid Foundation and the Red Cross in which I have brought together sixty artists singing, each from their home, ‘Alegría de vivir’. We recently did an event to present it and it has been a success. I called the mayor (José Luis Martínez-Almeida), who by the way I want to congratulate him for what he is doing in Madrid. I think he’s a pretty open person, pretty focused and smart, and he’s making people happy. [La entrevista se realizó la última semana de 2020]
I’m also going to prepare the 40 years of Los Morancos in February, Vicente Amigo’s new album, which is a masterpiece and he is a fucking genius. I also have a movie on the air about my life, but it does not intend to antagonize anyone. It’s a comedy, promoted by Vértice.
P. Will you be the protagonist?
No, because then nobody goes to see her. A year ago I mentioned the project to Antonio Banderas during a meal at his house and he told me: “If there is a good script, I will do it.” He is a very generous person.
–
