There is no need to go to Felipe II or Zorrilla: Concha Velasco, Rosa Chacel, Miguel Delibes, Jorge Guillén, Emilio Gutiérrez Caba, Elvira Mínguez, Fernando Cayo, Ágata Lys, Daniel Muriel, Paco Umbral, who began writing in Valladolid, and Of course, Lola Herrera. That city must have something, perhaps it is Pisuerga, that without reaching 300,000 inhabitants it has given birth to so many first swords of culture. Lola Herrera (Valladolid, 1935) recently received recognition in Barcelona from the Gremi de Restauració on the occasion of the festival of Santa Eulàlia, co-patron of the city.
Last year he received the Silver Biznaga at the Malaga Festival and the Lifetime award from the Union of Actors and Actresses. “I feel like a flood of awards is falling on me (laughs). I think it's also because of the years: people of my generation are all parading, there are only a few of us left,” she says sardonically in conversation with La Vanguardia.
The tribute in Barcelona was in the La Paloma room, whose vault and coffered ceilings the actress could not stop looking at with rapture. And his speech was a remembrance of those times when Barcelona was the Spanish capital of theater: “Since 1957 I have come to work in practically all the theaters in the city: the Romea, Candilejas, Goya, Calderón, Talía, Barcelona, Windsor, Villarroel, Tivoli... These rooms may not even sound familiar to many, but they are part of the history of Barcelona. With the demolition of the Calderón – an irreparable loss for the city and for the theater in general – they also took away the Candilejas, a small theater in its basement, the Bolero party hall and La Luna, a meeting place for the people of the profession. When we left the evening performance we enjoyed an atmosphere of freedom, even in the grayest of times. "How many interesting people I met in the night suburbs... It was an amazing world with unique places in years when everything was prohibited," the actress recalled.
Lola Herrera, in whose tribute the Badalona presenter Jorge Javier Vázquez – a friend and admirer of hers since forever – also spoke, discovered Barcelona with the help of her aunt María, who had left Valladolid some time ago to escape a bitter fate: “She was a seamstress and I worked for a company making underwear, which were small works of art. At that time, she was a woman with a paid job but single, and in her parents' house she also had to care for unmarried brothers, married sisters, and sisters-in-law when they went into labor. Staying single was the closest thing to slavery. Plus, she had an abusive father. Thus, the girl ran out of Valladolid, came to Barcelona and found everything that she had not had. And she transferred her love for the city to him.
Herrera is glad that, after the movement
And so, Lola makes this feminist plea: “We cannot forget the struggle of those women who have given their lives defending the rights of all. They are the mirror in which we must look at ourselves. I would like the younger ones to be interested in those times and those women, to be aware of everything that has come before, to worry about knowing where we come from and what can be lost. “This way we will give more value to what we have and we will take care of it.”
This week, Lola has returned to Madrid with the play Adictos, with Ana Labordeta and Lola Baldrich, and written by her son, Daniel Dicenta. At 88 years old, she confesses that she has no secrets to staying in shape. “I think that having gone through a post-war period, having had a very bad time but also a very good time, working hard and having good genetics. My parents didn't leave me anything material, but they did leave me good genetics (laughs). I continue doing theater because it is what I like the most and what gives me life. It is also good for your head because you exercise your memory a lot. I don't know how long, life is what stops your heart and you go to the other neighborhood. I am not afraid of death, it is as natural as life. And when it's my turn to go I'll go. "I just want the audience to leave the theater happy now, when I'm alive."
