The surprising past of Luis Tosar: graffiti artist, 'breakdancer' and a police chase

Luis Tosar was the last guest of Albert Espinosa on his Camino a casa, a program broadcast by La Sexta every Thursday night.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
25 May 2023 Thursday 22:55
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The surprising past of Luis Tosar: graffiti artist, 'breakdancer' and a police chase

Luis Tosar was the last guest of Albert Espinosa on his Camino a casa, a program broadcast by La Sexta every Thursday night. The winner of three Goya awards returned to Lugo, his hometown, to relive his most rebellious and enriching years at the hands of the presenter. In fact, for the first time the somewhat unusual past of the Spanish actor in his teenage years came to light.

And it is that Tosar, apart from being passionate about breakdancing, wearing an aesthetic with very wide clothes and doing graffiti throughout the city, also lived closely a police chase.

Along that path to memory, Luis Tosar recalled how he fantasized that the Lugo of the 80s of the last century was the closest thing to New York. In fact, he somehow imbibed that culture from across the pond and, before discovering his acting talent, he was a graffiti artist and breakdancer.

The Galician made a group at school, of about four or five kids, who always wore "very wide pants, a lot of military clothing because it was very resistant to be able to dance." Even his father, who was a tailor, helped them with this somewhat unusual aesthetic in the Galician city. If "the films all took place in large capitals of the United States", to these boys Lugo seemed "like the United States".

In fact, the actor recalled that they were going along the train tracks thinking that it was like the New York subway. “We went into the commercial galleries as if it were the Bronx. It was pure fantasy ”, he assured. However, "the Marists did not take his roll well at all" because "we did a hooliganism."

His group made "a graffiti of these that are useless for nothing more than to blur", which reached the school council. “I was freaking out because they called the parents,” she recounted. Finally, they were not expelled because the gym and mathematics teacher, Eladio, defended them and assured that they were "good students."

At another point in the program, the protagonist of Cell 211 or Mondays in the Sun also wanted to recall an anecdote with the police. It happened due to his group's fondness for entering a slaughterhouse in his childhood neighborhood because "it was the closest thing to Outsiders or the Bronx in a city like Lugo."

According to Tosar's account, "one day we went up to dance on the terrace and when we went down to the fourth floor we saw a silhouette and we freaked out." Then both he and his friends ran down the stairs and a man yelled at them “stop police!” However, they ignored the instructions and began to run.

"In one of those, a shot rang out and we were frozen and terrified," recalled the Galician, who explained that it was "a municipal police officer who had gotten into his kilos and was much older who was approaching with his gun outside: he had shot the air".

How did they manage to get out of that unusual situation? “It cost us our lives to convince him not to take us to the police station because he had to justify that he had shot,” said Tosar, who perfectly remembered that the only thing he thought at that moment was “how my parents see me with the Police…”.