Laura Valenzuela He turned 90 on February 18. In privacy. Only with the company of his only daughter, Lara. Who was one of the most popular faces on television it has been a long time since he left the house. She decided in 2012, after being honored by Televisión Española with an award, to renounce all kinds of social life. Too bad he didn’t decide to write his memoirs. It is true that his artistic life, essentially, has been told many times. But she has many memories, important people that she has met, secrets that she keeps to herself.
Very attractive, elegant woman, of high stature, full of sympathy whose real identity is that of María del Rocío Espinosa López, born in Seville in 1931, although she was never known Andalusian accent, for the simple reason that her parents took her with them having a year to Salamanca and other Spanish cities, including a season that they resided in a French village.
At the age of seventeen, who was still known as Rocío worked as a typist, earning three hundred pesetas: it was not a bad salary then, 1948. She studied Commerce courses. Later, she entered a dress store, where she worked as a salesperson and model. One day he had a certain disagreement with an important client, who complained to the owner of the establishment. That disgruntled lady was none other than the Duchess of Alba.
That pretty Sevillian woman had no desire to be an actress. As a model, she paraded for important firms at the beginning of the 1950s, Asunción Bastida, Marbel … She met one of the best comic actors in Spanish cinema, who died early due to a degenerative disease, José Luís Ozores, who encouraged her to will be presented to tests in Madrid’s Paseo de la Habana, headquarters of the first Spanish Television studios. It was 1957 and who would be from now on Laura Valenzuela, the nickname that she chose disdaining her own, which was not vulgar on the other hand, was admitted as a presenter, a pioneer in those times when in our country what in its day was called “the silly box” was born in diapers. That is, television. Until the beginning of the 1960s, regular spaces did not begin to be programmed from noon to midnight, in Spain there were only fifty devices owned by wealthy families. Francisco Franco was, of course, the first to have it in El Pardo. For a long time he possessed it, without wanting a more modern one.
Laura Valenzuela became a familiar face to the Spanish through the small screen. She immediately became fond of her job as an announcer, although four years earlier she had made her film debut with a brief role in the film. The fisherman of verses, starring Antonio Molina. She was not sure that she would make a living as an actress. And on television, the father of a young film producer, founder of Ágata Films, José Luís Dibildos, happened to see her, to whom his father suggested that he could hire her for one of his films. She did so, summoning her to her offices on Gran Vía, where Laura Valenzuela came out very excited with the script for Ana dice sí. And what was most decisive in his private life: they fell in love.
Until then little is known about the romances that Laura could have, because she has never wanted to refer to her youth loves. We only knew of one pianist that I saw, and listened to, every day from the balcony of the house where he lived. Love seems only platonic, as if it were the plot of a romantic comedy. Instead the courtship with José Luís Dibildos, one of the most important producers in Spanish cinema, happily followed. But long, very long: it lasted no less than thirteen years. And do you know why? He could not marry, he was separated from his wife, the divorce was still far from being approved. In the last days of that relationship, José Luís and Laura had a room at their disposal at the home of the much remembered humor artist Antonio Mingote.
Laura became pregnant. Dibildos pulled all possible strings to legalize her situation and marry her, which happened on March 27, 1971, now it is half a century, in the hotel complex of José Luís Ruíz Solaguren, located in Illescas (Toledo), the same place where Julio Iglesias and Isabel Preysler, and Karina with Tony Luz. Six months after the wedding, the only daughter born in the union of Laura and José Luis Dibildos. They baptized her with the name of Lara, very cinematic, because the parents had loved it Doctor Zhivago, whose female protagonist responded to that nickname in the story of Boris Pasternak, the actress Julie Christie.
Already married, Laura would have an important curriculum in the cinema. And also on television. Remember, for example, her magnificent performance as the presenter of the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, when our Salomé tied with three other participants, with that of “I live singing!”. But her husband, an old-fashioned man, forbade her to pursue her acting career. And she, obediently, dedicated herself to the home and the upbringing and education of Lara. It happened that José Luís Dibildos had the habit of working at night, writing his scripts, going to bed around seven in the morning, just when Laura got up to start her daily home shift.
Seventeen years after their marriage, Dibildos yielded and Laura was able to return to her television tasks. His last appearance before the cameras happened in 2006, on the occasion of the gala of the fiftieth anniversary of Spanish Television. Behind, he left a whole life dedicated to the world of interpretation and presence before the cameras of the small screen. If we say that she was the most popular of the presenters, we believe that the recognition of millions of viewers will accompany us. But apart from so many happy moments, Laura Valenzuela He had to overcome three dramatic trances when in 1993, his daughter was diagnosed, at the age of twenty-two, with thyroid cancer. Operated in Houston, Lara overcame that stab of fate. Which Laura also went through, also in the same North American hospital in 2005, fortunately overcoming breast cancer. In between, the pain for mother and daughter of the disappearance of José Luís Dibildos victim of a myocardial infarction in 2002, at the age of seventy-three. I met him. He was affectionate, uncomplicated, and did not tend to be puffed up by hits like Beehive, that he financed with a collaboration from Televisión Española. The money he put, of course, one hundred million pesetas, in those years, a large amount. Then, when doing the math, he confessed to me that he had been eaten for a meal: he only gained prestige, but not a penny. He invented that of “the third way” of Spanish cinema, a repertoire of more advanced comedies when only traditional, folk or religious stories were filmed here.
Those claws of life suffered by Laura Valenzuela She has them present in her memory, although as she has always been an optimistic woman, she overcame them by remembering so many happy chapters that have accompanied her in her long existence. He feels happy when he receives a visit from Lara and her two children, Fran, twenty-two years old (the result of her daughter’s marriage to basketball player Fran Murcia) and her other grandson, Alvaro, thirteen, (from the second marriage with the rider Muñoz Escassi). Lara maintains a discreet but continuous acting profession. She remained friends with her two partners, although she has not found a partner to make her happy afterwards. She is a funny, nice woman. I played a certain innocent joke on him one day: “I’ve seen you naked once …”, I said. Perplexed, I had to clarify: “Exactly when you were only a few days old and we did a report on your mother while she was washing you and pouring talcum powder and drops of cologne on your little body.”
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