Yesterday they were fulfilled. On stage, Isabel Pantoja in her first reappearance, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, dressed by Lina in a very baroque way, as could only happen in the eighties. Shine, and more shine on the face, body and hair. In a box, Queen Sofía, another day at the office having to go to places she might not want to go to. In another, a very small child now known as Kiko Rivera, dressed as a Murillo angel and in the arms of his uncle Agustín, with the flower in his hand that he would later give to his mother at the end of the hour and 10 minutes of the performance. Your little one of the soul with the cinnamon flower.
The concert, , is an almost perfect photo of the Spain of that time, having just signed our entry into Europe, with ETA murdering innocents… and a country that had already seen the bullfighter’s death broadcast and then saw the widow broken with pain at the funeral. Bullfighting and copla united in holy matrimony until Avispado separated them.
Pantoja, dressed as a soprano, because we already know that atrocities are suffered in opera, is hypnotic on stage. It seduces, it contains itself and it tears. He whispers and tears into that throat of his. The show begins with the audience applauding him, the violins play and he sings “In case there is a question in the air” from that great song that is Today I want to confess. It won’t be until after half an hour when he turns towards the box and says: “Good evening, Your Majesty.” And turn to the audience and say in a very soft voice: “Good evening, friends.” “Little by little, if God helps me, I want to move forward,” he says. How it tasted and how it tastes. He asks the still wife of Juan Carlos I for permission to dedicate a song to the bullfighter, He was my life. Then she will say that above all she is a mother, which is something that today sounds delicate to say the least.
Few things remain from the Spain of that time. Queen Sofía only goes where she wants, ETA is not there, although some insist, and Europe is no longer as exciting as it was in the eighties. Only she remains, Isabel, hermetic, the widow of Spain. When they talk about her, Spain starts watching TV. It will be for a reason.
