You look great.
Thank you.
What is your trick?
There isn’t any, just good genes.
From who?
Mother’s family: an aunt lived 105 years.
Exercise?
I’ve never done gymnastics. It’s not for me.
Diet?
Like a donkey, although without excesses.
¿Rich?
I smoked until I was 52 years old. That killed me. I took advantage of a post-operative period and left it.
Well done.
I wouldn’t be here if I had continued smoking. I started when I was 18… through theater.
And so?
I played a girl who smoked. I heard laughter… because of how bad I smoked. I decided to practice on the street. And I got hooked.
And are you still with the theater?
Yeah! I have put on the play Addicts with my son, which I have been representing for a year now.
What was your first function?
In Valladolid, with Chicho Ibáñez Serrador: we were the same age, we were 17 years old and he was so good that he directed me.
I notice admiration…
Talking to Chicho changed my life. I was going to marry my boyfriend from Valladolid, I told him about it and he said: “Exciting.”
Very ironically, I understand.
Yes, he let it slip, he didn’t say more… But then I realized that I was suffocating in Valladolid, that I had to flee from there.
And fled?
Before, I asked to join the cast of actors at Radio Madrid, in Madrid.
Why’s that?
Since I was a child I spoke on the radio for children’s programs, and they liked my voice. But I never wanted to be an artist…
And did you join Radio Madrid?
Yes, yes, they accepted me. And my parents supported me, as they always supported me.
What were you doing in that Madrid of the 50s?
I loved walking, window shopping and going to the movies: node and double session. I was happy.
Did you have a boyfriend in Madrid?
Yes, Daniel Dicenta. We had two children. Until she left to get tobacco and didn’t come back.
When he left?
Our son Daniel was one year old… It was very painful, very hard. But I did it well.
What did you do well?
Take care of my children, have them by my side. They were comedians’ children, and I wanted to get home at night and be able to sniff them.
Did anyone help you?
My father retired early and came with my mother to Madrid. My parents, always generous. With that example I raised my children.
And… everything in order?
That is why my children love family and have a high sense of commitment and responsibility… and perhaps that is why neither of them has wanted to have children.
Do you also dedicate yourself to art?
She is an actress, and he is a director. His ambition is to do what they like, they hate creating corridors in the artistic world.
And you what?
I get proposals, I read them and I could do them…, but I don’t like them at all. And I don’t do them, and so calm.
What would you like to do?
Some work that spoke with critical and reflective intelligence about this crazy world in which we live today.
How many years have you been on stage, Mrs. Lola?
Seventy years…
Seventy years!
Asunción Balaguer beat me. But she passed away four years ago. And I felt it a lot.
Did you admire her, too?
As an actress and as a person, for her talent and her ability to understand.
Paco Rabal made him suffer…
Whether he slept with others doesn’t matter, but it’s wrong to rob your partner of company, warmth… That’s a lack of loyalty.
And Concha Velasco… dead too.
He was a star. She did everything, everything. No, I’m not a star.
No? In any case… here it is!
We are a generation that is leaving… We are finished!
Do you want to leave?
No! I am with my thoughts and I never get bored. I have never, ever been bored. And if someone bores me, I run away!
What excites you the most?
To be here.
What advice would you give to a young girl?
Do what you are passionate about. Don’t dream of arriving: arriving, arriving… where? It’s better to be. Oh, and don’t get married! Live together.
What if an Arab sheikh appears, Lola?
What a contradiction, those humiliate women! The Spanish athletes who are sold to those countries are unworthy, deplorable.
What else upsets you?
Let there be no one to stop Israel from murdering children in Gaza.
