Don't ask me why, but just as the term child prodigy has been coined, I've never heard of talented older people being called old prodigies. And see that Tamames has made merits for being so. A man who at his age and in just two days has been able to discredit Vox like no other. Not the most anti-fascist movement in the world, not Willy Toledo's most inspired day, not an entire season of Pablo Iglesias' La Base. No one has done more in less time to dismantle Vox. One day we will thank him with a street, a bust or a roundabout.
Rarely have we made it as clear as this week that this is no country for old people. Yes, maybe for old women. In the middle of the debate, Gabriel Rufián remembered Maruja Torres, who praised his dignity in aging, in contrast to that of Mr. Ramón. I recommend to the candidate for mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet that, as a good follower of our program, he does not miss tomorrow's Sunday. We portray a neighborhood boy who will surely give him good material for his next campaign rallies.
We live in a country that specializes in keeping in our collective imagination singers or actors who succeeded as children. From Joselito to Marisol, from Melody to María Isabel, or from Ana d'Enrique and Ana to Tino de Parchís. The case we are dealing with would not be directly associated with the child prodigy stereotype. These days I have shared many hours with Juanjo Ballesta, that creature who succeeded thanks to Achero Mañas playing El Bola.
Almost 25 years later, when he smiles and marks his dimples, and now his wrinkles too, I can't help but see that boy who made us suffer with every wafer his father gave him. Juanjo was not the typical child prodigy. His mother was one of those mothers who take their children to castings so that their child ends up starring in a dodo commercial. He had high hopes for his daughter, Juanjo's sister, but in the end, and almost back-to-back, it was Juanjo who succeeded.
Achero Mañas asked him in his first test to insult, and that boy drew on the wisdom of someone who grew up on the streets of Parla to make an exhibition of slogans that even the best Hristo Stoichkov.
In less than five years we saw Juanjo Ballesta win a Goya, for El Bola, and the Concha de Plata de San Sebastià, for 7 Virgins. At the age of 16, he had achieved more recognition than established veteran actors, old prodigies without an award. And just when his career was reaching its zenith, the guy left everything because he wasn't happy, and started working as a marble cutter in his neighborhood for 700 euros a month.
"My father has worked all his life at the construction site and has never complained. And then on set you meet these actors who complain about everything. But what are you doing man? If you have a privileged life. What these people should do is bend their backs and get to work on a construction site. So they would know what it is to work". amen
Hyperactive to a high degree with attention deficit, Juanjo Ballesta leaves almost no silence between questions and answers. He answers at the mouth of a cannon, with the same naturalness and spontaneity with which he recites scripts. In his mouth are phrases that sound like Spanish neorealism, as if Rafael Azcona or Juan Antonio Bardem had written them.
In his latest film, he plays Lucio Urtubia, the anarchist with the soul of Robin Hood who robbed banks to distribute it later. You can watch it on Netflix. Now that he is already being given roles as lords of Grenades, I would love to see Ballesta playing Tamames. The professor has won a biopic, or a remake of El viaje a ninguna parte.
