Marisol ended up being who she was and of all of us so much that Pepa Flores – her real name – has lived in hiding since 1985, back in Malaga, the land of her childhood, short in time, rich in hardships and very Spanish.
If the United States had Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, Spain had its Marisol, a child prodigy, discovered by producer Manolo Goyanes while watching on television the union and folkloric demonstration of May Day 1959 at the Santiago Bernabéu – television show unforgettable, endless and unfathomable, homage to His Excellency the Head of State, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. The girl was eleven years old and she was part of a choir in the Women’s Section where she already sang and danced with salt shaker.
Said and done: Goyanes baptized her Marisol – her real name seemed ugly to him –, he took her to live in his house as one of his large family – a palace compared to the corrala of Málaga – and film after film he threw Marisol into the spotlight. a meteoric, exceptional fame, thanks to the naturalness that that little girl gave on screen.
“All of us girls wanted to be like her but we were fat and pimply, while Marisol…” says Esperanza Aguirre, one of the fifteen testimonies of the entertaining documentary. The first film – A Ray of Light (1960) – was already a great success, with the public, the box office and the regime. The Francos found Marisol amused. Light and color, sun of Spain, a country where tourists began to arrive, even in bikinis. Did Goyanes exploit that girl? The documentary passes without drawing blood on anything or anyone – for what? – although any viewer – premiering in theaters on May 10 – will come to the conclusion that today it would have been a case of child labor exploitation.
Goyanes exploited the phenomenon with a business vision by creating a very active network of fans, which he nurtured with a thousand and one tricks. The girl’s life consisted of dinners with older gentlemen, filming – An Angel Has Arrived, Tómbola, Marisol in Rio –, and trips around the world when not even El Tato knew Palma de Mallorca here. And not just anywhere. Thus, he participated in the famous Ed Sullivan show on CBS, live from a theater in New York – he coincided with Harpo Marx on the program – and toured Japan to promote Me consomo, number one on the archipelago’s sales list. Long pasta.
And the girl became a woman, as that one said. Without conveying much enthusiasm in the images, rather resignation, Marisol married in 1969 with… Carlos Goyanes, son of the producer, who was not amused by the wedding for reasons that the documentary ignores. They did not like each other but the couple de facto separated in 1972. And there, with the departure of the Goyanes house, the transformation began. He is still in the movies but things don’t work, because of the erotic imperative of some of the films and despite the prestige of directors like Camus, Saura or Bardem.
And Antonio Gades appears, bursts in, dancer and seducer –how little Cristina Hoyos makes this clear in the documentary!–. Two people still married (Gades with Maruja Díaz). Pepa Flores loses the unconditional favor of the people, the same one that preferred her and Marisol enslaved. It was not Figo at the Camp Nou but it was the beginning of an irreversible distancing.
The couple puts the world on their backs and communism as their flag. Marisol seemed like a Francoist, Pepa Flores a Marxist. Following the last executions, in September 1975, they took refuge in Altea. There, one morning in 1976, after dropping her daughter María off at school, Pepa Flores discovers in a kiosk the cover that she devoted to the magazine Interviú. She’s naked! One million copies sold. “She didn’t charge a penny,” admits César Lucas, the photographer. Someone would do it but that is not clear in the documentary.
Pepa and Antonio marry in Havana in 1982. Witnesses: Fidel Castro and Alicia Alonso. That year Spain turned to socialism. And the dancer was overcome by his nature. One day, “Pepa was the last to find out,” Gades falls in love with a Swiss woman, a maiden of great fortune. Divorce by KO. Pepa Flores puts up the free sign and goes for it. Since 1985, she has not appeared in public even at the Goya of Honor 2020. She feels happy to our, sorry, Marisol. Friends?
