There is no couple fight, alcove fight, attack of jealousy or pain in the horns that does not appear in the repertoire of Pimpinela, a duo that has closed the tour in Barcelona to celebrate 40 years on stage. Although it may seem masochistic, when they reach the last encore, Lucía Galán asks the audience:
– Do you want the song with drum or without?
– With fight!!!
The Coliseum theater is clamoring after two hours of conjugal pugilism between the Galán brothers, the Pimpinela duo. The reproaches have flown and, despite this, the public wants more: “and now what are you missing?”, she despairs, “a flower”, she complains, who makes up for it with a “you love yourself more than a no one”. The blow against Lucía knocks out Joaquín – not very well-advised in real life, like the couples of his subjects -, and gets the audience out of their seats. If the couple is at war, the audience of Pimpinela is clearly on their side…
The audience is enthralled and surrenders to the effective show. Song after song without breaks, noses and faces, audiovisual fragments, Pimpinela is a discussion machine.
What they don’t disunite…
– It’s pure telenovela!
They praise Israel, 40, and his friend, as they eat popcorn, enthusiastic about the caricature of the wonderful world of the circus, sorry, the couple. In the same row of the audience, a spectator, in shorts, dances, knows the lyrics and crackles. Another notable sector of the public are the Latinos, an alliance that creates a festival atmosphere despite the successive shipwrecks of the couples staged by Joaquín and Lucía, Argentines, children of Spanish immigrants and artistic duo by maternal imperative.
The memory of the parents, with photos on the screens, is a truce. And a mirage. Pimpinela managed to survive the first big hit, Olvídame y pega la vuelta, number one in the singles charts in half of the world, in 1982. So, Raquel, 47 years old, from Barcelona, ??came with her work colleague Lourdes, moved by “ longing and nostalgia. During work breaks we feel like singing it, and we pretend to be angry. As a child I knew them all”.
Pimpinela has not reinvented itself – why did they have to lose their personality? – but has updated the boos and adapted them to today. From here, in Traición, a grieving Lucía scolds her husband for flirting at a dinner with a couple of friends. A slap, some laughter, those looks, that I’m not blind… As Pimpinela suspected, Joaquín has messed up. An infidelity, yes, but not with the friend, but with… the husband (an outcome that the audience welcomes as they welcomed the arrival of the Seventh Cavalry at the Capitol cinema).
Far from the man-in-residence of the aforementioned Olvídame – a husband disappears for two years and tries to rejoin the home one night as if nothing had happened – the following successes profile a traditional woman, but empowered to the core , who doesn’t let a single one pass and is even willing to have an idyll with a man twenty years younger ( Cuando lo veo , sung while the screens broadcast a telenovela video clip and apotheosic denouement).
The function evokes the lights of El Molino, furtive lovers in the subway of Mexico City, married and uncommitted men whom the female Pimpinela unmasks, with the decisive support of the very participatory audience. Poor Joaquín – former alpha male – is even given an identity card and is limited to throwing stones on stage.
A Pimpinela show is distracting for being unique: they put on a show of smoky love, fights, “nothing happens to me, I’m tired”, silly jealousy and the exaggerations of a telenovela with a feathered gallant and a brave woman. It’s not opera, it’s Pimpinela.
