The Guillén Cuervo brothers’ childhood was not a ‘normal’ one, at least not like that of most Spanish children of their generation. Their parents combined up to 14 theatre performances a week with recordings at Televisión Española’s Studios 1, with only lunchtime to watch their children. Natalia, Fernando and Cayetana Guillén Cuervo remember their childhood doing homework in the dressing rooms, spending the afternoons behind the scenes at the María Guerrero and they do not forget that they were more than Seven years in a row without celebrating Christmas at home.
“We spent Christmas in Valencia because there was a performance, or in Barcelona because there was a performance, or in Zaragoza because they were working there. Or summers that we had to spend with relatives…,” says Fernando. New Year’s Eve and the New Year’s celebrations coincided with the breaks between theatre acts.: fundamental experiences that marked their youth and encouraged two of them, Fernando and Cayetana, to end up following the path started by their parents.
Lari Ondo, a fundamental figure
In addition, in the childhood of these children appears a key figure: Lari OndoAt just 19 years old, this young woman entered their home and immediately became part of their lives. This is how she herself remembers it: “I have been with them since 1969, because my sister was living in the building next door and she told me: ‘Look, Lari, there’s a lady who wants a babysitter for three children, and they are Gemma Cuervo and Fernando Guillén’. And I said ‘How wonderful! Yes!'”
Lari takes care of the children after the birth of Cayetana, and will be attached to the family for the next eight yearsMore than five decades have passed and the brothers remember her like this: “It was the best thing in the world. It was a very important pillar. I think that for my mother it was salvation, really.” explains Natalia Guillén Cuervo. “Lari is like… I can’t tell you like a second mother, because that doesn’t exist, but yes “He is a person who took care of us for many years,” adds Fernando..
The Guillén Cuervo brothers during their youth
I try to avoid drama
As a woman leaving adolescence behind to enter adulthood, and aware of the lifestyle of the couple she worked for, Lari tried to prevent the couple’s children from following in their parents’ footsteps: “I wanted to avoid them being actors so they wouldn’t have to go through all that: having to leave their children with other people. They would go away for two or three months at a time, and they would often cry. Gemma would cry a lot. The children would cry ‘Mom, do you have to go again!?’It was a drama!“.
Lari Ondo also remembers, The ‘juggling’ of the couple to attend the special celebrations in the lives of their children:”There was a communion of one of the children, they went to mass and then went to Barajas. What were they going to Barajas for? To eat with the children and two older uncles who lived in Aluche.They only had time to eat and catch a plane to Barcelona!“.
