On the night of the Silver Frames, the awards that the oldest magazine of our cinema continues to distribute, Concha Velasco was always on the list. She was almost always nominated, whether in the film, theater or television categories. Not for nothing are they awards given by readers, an infallible barometer of popularity.
During the seventeen years in which I worked for the magazine, the first of the 21st century, I used to offer her my arm, to accompany her to pose for the official photos, or to accommodate her in one of the corners of the Joy Eslava, on whose boards she had debuted for true with a small role in the magazine Ven y ven... al Eslava, directed in 1958 with great success by Luis Escobar.
On those walks through the theater converted into a nightclub, I always took the opportunity to whisper to him that he reminded me of my mother. Then she, with great affection, squeezed my arm, and she told me: “Everyone tells me the same thing.” In recent years, Concha Velasco was the mother, or grandmother, dreamed of by everyone. She personified kindness, tenderness and tenacity like no one else. Everyone wanted to see themselves reflected in her eternal smile. Her sons, Manuel and Paco, were the envy of everyone.
Although she was not lucky in love - her relationship with Paco Marsó was a permanent cataclysm - she used to say with humor that perhaps it was because she was always working. During those last years, she won Best Theatrical Actress for Hello Dolly!, the version of the Broadway musical that she launched and starred in in 2001; for Josep María Pou's work La vida por siempre, in 2009, and for Hécuba, one of her participations in the Mérida Festival, in 2014.
As I said, I was almost always nominated, for series like Gran Hotel or films like Beyond the Garden, by Pedro Olea. She managed to win eight awards. When they gave him the eighth, the Fotogramas de Honor, in 2021, I no longer worked there. But, like everyone else, I had seen her years ago on television, very excitedly accepting the Goya of Honor, in recognition of her entire film career, which also began in the 1950s, when she had barely turned fifteen with The Queen. Mora (Raúl Alfonso, 1954), adaptation of the zarzuela, for which she was hired, without credit, as a dancer, since the Valladolid native born in 1939, who ended up participating in more than eighty films, had trained in classical dance.
The rise of the one who ended up appearing in the credits as Conchita Velasco was meteoric, it took four years for her to be definitively consecrated with The Girls of the Red Cross (1958). Her unexpected leap into the world of song with Chica Ye-Yé, which is currently playing in every home in Spain, made her the symbol of the decade. The Ye-Yé Girl thing stayed with him forever. The 60s were her first prodigious decade. From the films with Tony Leblanc she went to those of Manolo Escobar, and from a youth icon thanks to Histories of Television to playing the wife of the main actors of the time, such as Alfredo Landa or José Luis López Vázquez, always in light comedies.
After the Transition, more serious roles arrived, competing with international stars such as Gina Lollobrigida and Danielle Darrieux, in the co-production I Didn't Find Roses for My Mother (1973); participating in Pedro Olea's films such as Tormento (1974), Pim, pam, pum ¡fuego! (1975), or the aforementioned Beyond the Garden, which was one of her last film roles. He worked under the orders of other prestigious directors such as Jaime Camino (The Long Holidays of '36), Mario Camus (La colmena), Josefina Molina (Esquilache), Luis García Berlanga (Paris-Timbuktu), David Trueba (Welcome Home), among Many others.
She met her husband, Paco Marsó, a theater producer, through a performance of Don Juan Tenorio, and her entry into television also came thanks to her appearances on Estudio 1, the legendary black and white theater program. She took part in the Transition, symbolically asking for amnesty in Adolfo Marsillach's play Las arrecogías del beguinage of Santa María Egipciaca, which could not be performed until the dictator fell.
He triumphed in style with his musical Mama I Want to Be an Artist (1986), and with the works that his friend Antonio Gala wrote for him, such as The Friday Apples (1999). Written by her son Manuel Martínez Velasco, the result of her relationship with the director of photography Fernando Arribas, María's Room was her farewell to the stage in September 2021.
The numerous personal problems that he faced throughout his life had to be compensated by that immense popularity, for which he was omnipresent on the small screen, whether in Teresa de Jesús, a series for which in the 80s he won numerous awards, such as presenting variety programs, magazines or contests (Viva elspecta, Querida Concha, Surprise, surprise, Neighborhood Cinema...) or ringing the end of the year bells. Everyone loved her. She was a loving, endearing and feisty woman.
