Blood Ties ended the year with a final installment dedicated to the legendary singer Nino Bravo, who died fifty years ago in a car accident. Throughout the program, broadcast on La 1 on TVE, and especially during the subsequent debate led by Jordi González, we were able to learn unknown details about the artist’s life and, mainly, his music.
One of these details is the identity of the famous protagonist of his song Noelia, the woman who inspired one of his greatest hits. In fact, it was Norma Duval who revealed this information, in addition to claiming to have been a friend of his for more than forty years.
“There is a girl who is the same / But different from the others / I see her every night / Walking along the beach / And I don’t know where she comes from / And I don’t know where she is going.” With these verses begins Noelia, one of Nino Bravo’s most famous songs, which he released in 1972, a year before his death. There has been much speculation about whether this woman was real or if she was a love of the singer…
The answer always came from Santiago Algueró, the composer and author of this song, and husband of Carmen Sevilla, who was inspired by the beauty of Noelia Afonso, who was Miss Spain 1969 and Miss Europe 1970. This is what Norma wanted to confirm this Tuesday Duval in Blood Ties. In fact, the surprise came when the star revealed her friendship with this famous woman.
“More than forty years” of friendship unite her and Noelia, Norma began by explaining, who also noted that she had met her in Paris with her husband, the Catalan businessman Santiago Puig. “She is a great friend, I love her very much and we talked for a long time this afternoon… let me clarify one thing…” the artist continued.
“It has always been speculated that Algueró and her had a relationship. It’s not true, it’s not true. Noelia has only had one love and it is Santiago. And, I’ll tell you more, Santiago was the promoter of beauty contests in Tenerife, like the one she participated in. There they met,” she continued with the story.
Currently, Noelia is still married to Santiago, she is 73 years old and has five grandchildren and resides in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, her hometown, where she runs a luxury hotel. Finally, and to top it all off, Norma Duval did point out what happened to Algueró when he wrote a song for Noelia: “He was very in love, but it doesn’t mean that he had a relationship with everyone, but rather that he was inspired by Noelia’s beauty, which is “a beautiful woman.”
