Don't ask me why, but just as the term "kid prodigies" has been coined, I've never heard talented seniors called "old wunderkinds." And he sees that Tamames has made merits to be. A man who, at his age and in just two days, has been able to discredit Vox like no one else. Not the most anti-fascist movement in the world, not the most inspired day of Willy Toledo, not an entire season of La Base by Pablo Iglesias. Nobody has done more in less time to dismantle Vox. Someday we will thank him with a street, a bust or a roundabout.
Few times have we made it as clear as this week that this is not a country for old people. If for old. In the midst of the debate, Gabriel Rufián remembered Maruja Torres, whose dignity he praised as he grew older, in contrast to that of Don Ramón. I recommend to the candidate for mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramanet that, as a good follower of our program, do not miss tomorrow's Sunday. We portray a neighborhood boy who surely gives him good material for his next campaign rallies.
We live in a country that specializes in keeping singers or actors who succeeded as children in our collective imagination. From Joselito to Marisol, from Melody to María Isabel, or from Ana de Enrique and Ana, to Tino de Parchís. The case at hand would not associate him directly with the stereotype of the child prodigy. These days I have shared many hours with Juanjo Ballesta, that kid who triumphed at the hands of Achero Mañas playing El Bola.
Almost 25 years later, when he smiles and shows his dimples, and now also his wrinkles, I cannot stop seeing that boy who made us suffer with every host his father gave him. Juanjo was not the typical child prodigy. Her mother was one of those mothers who takes her children to castings so that her child ends up starring in an ad for dodottis.
He had high hopes for his daughter, Juanjo's sister, but in the end, and almost on the rebound, it was Juanjo who managed to succeed. Achero Mañas asked him in his first test to insult, and that boy drew the wisdom of someone who has grown up on the streets of Parla to make a display of swear words that not even the best Hristo Stoichkov.
In less than five years we have seen Juanjo Ballesta win a Goya, for El Bola, and the San Sebastián Silver Shell, for Seven Virgins. At the age of 16, he had achieved more recognition than established veteran actors, old wunderkinds without a prize. And just when his career reached the zenith, the uncle left everything because he wasn't happy, and he started working as a marble mason in his neighborhood for 700 euros a month.
“My father has worked on the site all his life and has never complained. And then on set you find these actors who complain about everything. But what are you doing man? If you have a privileged life. What those people would have to do is fold their backs and get to work on a construction site. That way they would know what it is to work”. Amen.
Highly hyperactive with attention deficit, Juanjo Ballesta leaves almost no silence between questions and answers. He answers point blank, with the same naturalness and spontaneity with which he recites scripts. In his mouth there are phrases that sound like Spanish neorealism, as if they had been written by Rafael Azcona or Juan Antonio Bardem.
In his latest film he plays Lucio Urtubia, the anarchist with the soul of Robin Hood who robbed banks to distribute it. You can watch it on Netflix. Now that they give him the roles of tall gentlemen, I would love to see Ballesta playing Tamames. The professor has earned a biopic, or a remake of The Trip to Nowhere.
