The comedian Paco Arévalo, emblem of several generations, died yesterday at his home in Valencia at the age of 76 for reasons that were unknown last night, although the first reports pointed to a sudden death due to a cardiovascular episode. His son was the one who found him lifeless when he entered his home.
Born in Madrid but raised in the Valencian municipality of Catarroja, his artistic career has spanned no less than five decades, which led him to become one of the most recognized comedians in Spain. His first performances date back to the early seventies, after his participation in the bullfighting comedy show El bombero torero.
His firm determination to dedicate himself to the world of entertainment with his well-known – and now politically incorrect – imitations and cheap jokes opened the doors to the cinema, where the humorous genre lived in Spain in its final age of ‘or in the decade of the eighties. It was when he rose to fame for his performance in Su majestad la risa (1981) and, above all, for his roles in the marathon of tapes that he shot in just two years under the direction of Mariano Ozores: El currante ( 1983), Agítese antes de usarla (1983), El pan debajo del brazo (1984) or Los obsexos (1985), which won him the recognition and admiration of the public.
This opened the doors for him to the legendary television contest Un dos, tres… responde otra vez, in which he appeared for the first time in 1983. Then came other small screen programs such as Deluxe or Risas y estrellas. In recent years, when his star seemed to have stopped shining, the Antena 3 channel called him to star in his own program in 1997: Arévalo y Cía.
With the turn of the century came his second era as a performer, both in film and on television, with collaborations with other popular comedians in Este es mi barrio (1996), Papa Piquillo (1998), ¡Ja me maaten …! (2000), The gold of Moscow, Isi
He also wanted to try his luck with a discipline he hadn’t explored, the theater, in which he starred in 2011 with the singer Bertín Osborne in the successful production Dos mellizos, which toured all over Spain. From here, an intense and televised friendship between the two was born.
