She was the first presenter in the history of television in Spain and left the set of the world yesterday: Laura Valenzuela has died, Laurita Valenzuela for TVE viewers during the 1960s, very popular especially for Galas del sábado, variety program of TVE (1968-1970) that he presented alongside his great friend Joaquín Prat.
Born Rocío Laura Espinosa López-Cepero (February 18, 1931, Seville), the popular model – mannequin, as they were called then–, actress, presenter and singer Laura Valenzuela died at the Princessa Hospital in Madrid at the age of 92 years of age, after being admitted to the hospital for several days due to a recurrent infection.
Laura Valenzuela (she used this stage name in memory of her grandmother) was the first presenter to appear on the screens of the 600 televisions operating in Spain (Madrid area and surroundings) when TVE’s broadcasts premiered ‘October of the year 1956. Sixty-six years later, those who still remember her debut emphasize the grace with which Laurita freaked out on set to announce a refrigerator in rigorous live, for example. Appliance brands sponsored the broadcasts and commercial spots were not filmed then: you had to know how to promote them with sympathy and conviction.
Laura Valenzuela, who at the beginning of the 1950s made her mark as a model in fashion shows, took part in auditions to be a presenter at the first TVE facilities in Paseo de la Habana. “I had no idea what television was!”, he confessed to me during a conversation, almost twenty years ago. Laura Valenzuela made her debut without having ever seen a television or a television set before.
In Valenzuela, she had been fired shortly before as a catwalk model due to a disagreement with an important client: the Duchess of Alba became so enamored of a dress worn by Laura that the model she put in her handbag the aristocrat of bad manners.
After debuting as a TVE presenter, Laura Valenzuela met her future husband, film producer José Luis Dibildos, who promoted her in films such as L (1967) or Soltera y madre en la vida (1969 ) and in some co-productions with Alain Delon or Sophia Loren.
After thirteen years of courtship, she insisted on marrying Dibildos, who agreed (“with a romantic ‘if there’s no other way'”, she explained, amused) on the condition that she abandon her career in actress and presenter, which she accepted without reproach: she retired from the small screen in 1971, after marrying Dibildos and having their daughter Lara.
Laura Valenzuela, in the 1990s, twenty years after she retired, sporadically returned to TVE to lead TVE mornings, with her daughter Lara Dibildos, a tactic of the public network to stand up to the Campos, mother and daughter too, who worked in the mornings of Telecinco.
The great popularity of Laura Valenzuela, which reaches to this day, is mainly due to the force with which she entered the homes Galas del sábado , varieties, entertainment and humor for Saturday nights, with songs and her own dance body. I liked, above all, the chemistry between Laura Valenzuela and Joaquín Prat, for the elegance of the dress (gala) and being, in addition to the invincible sympathy that both radiated. All the artists of that time, national and international, from cinema and song, paraded around the set. Those who watched that show still remember it, even though it only aired for two seasons.
In the wave of this weekly success, Laura Valenzuela would present the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest, which RTVE organized after Massiel’s victory in 1968. Valenzuela did impeccably well.
Laura Valenzuela, for her wit and charm, is already among the immortals of the sentimental chronicle of television in Spain.
