Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel have been together for more than half a century and they form an inseparable part of the soundtrack of our lives, but they are much more than an artistic couple. The two have shared their passion for music, art and cinema, but also a great social awareness y political commitment.
Coming from humble origins -Ana Belén was the daughter of a cook and a doorman from the Madrid neighborhood of Lavapiés and Víctor Manuel was the son of a railway worker and a merchant from Asturias, whose grandfather was shot by the Franco regime after the Civil War-, they have defended the rights of the less fortunate and supported the working class.
Militants of the Spanish Communist Party
In the mid-70s, Both of them began to be active in the Spanish Communist Party. In her case, with the beginning of the actors’ strike of 1975. As the Spanish transition was about to begin, it was a risky act, to say the least, and they themselves acknowledged this during an interview on the program The world we want:
“In 1975, joining the PC as a militant was not easy, and you were risking a lot. Come on, “You were risking your physical integrity” Ana Belén explains. Victor Manuel completes the statement: “At that time, militancy only caused you problems.“.
Ana Belén and Víctor Manuel sing ‘The Gate of Alcalá’
That same year Victor Manuel is arrested in Pamplona after participating in a Christmas carol festival and surprise the audience with three songs that were not in the program. In one of them the Asturian referred to the actors’ strike and in another He asked for amnesty for political prisoners: “Now that we are the majority, we ask for amnesty”he sang. He was held at the police station from three in the morning until noon, just nine hours, and was released without charge.
Two bombs in his home
However, one of the most difficult moments in the artists’ lives came shortly after. Both were in the crosshairs of the Spanish far right, and their lives were in such danger that the group Fuerza Nueva placed two bombs in their home in Torrelodones while they were on a trip to Havana.
This is how Victor Manuel tells it in Before it’s too late, his memoirs: “VWe lived in a place that, if you think about it now, is scarier than it was then, in the last house on a dead-end street, bordering the train tracks and with no neighbours around except on the weekend or in summer. Some time later we decided to build another house in a more open and busy place, without giving up the other one. When they were raising it, someone placed a firecracker in the center of the structure with the intention of knocking it down by piercing a 20-centimeter slab.. This attack was not signed. I went to the Guardia Civil barracks, where they accompanied me to see the damage. The sergeant was clear, even before seeing it: this was the air.”
The birth of his son David
However, his period of militancy within the Communist Party had an expiration date.I started to slam the door in the Communist Party when David was born, and suddenly I realized that I wanted to be with him at home playing that in an endless meeting with some comrades” narrates Victor Manuel in The world we want.
David San José was born in 1976, but The final farewell would come six years later, in 1982, when Felipe González wins the elections for the Government of Spain with the victory of the PSOE. This is what Ana Belén told this same year in The night in 24 hours: “After the elections, those elections in which the PSOE won and it was a debacle for the PC, many of us suggested that after that result what should happen was an extraordinary congress. Those responsible refused and I said: ‘Well, I’m going to suspend my membership until a congress arrives’. And so it is until today.”
