He abhors those who have no scruples about taking advantage of the pain of others and deplores the multitude of those who are offended by everything, who in turn offend all the time. And the haste, the rudeness, every man for himself! Tour the theaters with ‘A night with the classics’
The popular film, theater and television actor, born in Tetuán in 1943, Miguel Rellán was shocked by Covid-19. Talk about anything without fear. He is on tour with ‘Una noche con los Clásicos’, shows in which he pays tribute to Adolfo Marsillach. It amuses him to say that he can have the face of an idiot. You know it isn’t. And he feels loved.
Fully recovered?
– Bearing in mind that I was about to palm it, I am divine. Fortunately, many of us survived. [al Covid-19] A younger brother of mine has passed away. Many families have been injured as a result of the pandemic. I spent twenty-two days in the hospital and then another twenty-four days in isolation at home.
Do you remember?
– I felt bad, but since I am always in good health, I said to myself ‘this is a flu, tomorrow it will go away’, and when I realized it, I was surrounded by some men dressed in green who looked like astronauts. I woke up in the hospital. I asked one of the doctors, ‘Mary, am I going to die? It’s that I’m never dead and I don’t know, but I feel terrible, very, very, very much.” It’s not that I got caught up in thinking about death again, because I’ve known for a long time now that I’m going to die, so I came to say to myself, ‘Well, if it is now, it had to be some time. ‘ As Juan Ramón Jiménez used to say: ‘I will die and the birds will continue to sing, nothing will happen’ [la versión más que libre de la cita es original del propio Rellán] Although, man!, I’d rather not die and pass the can! [Ríe]
What is emerging?
– Domme’s payroll is rising exponentially…; We’ll see what the planet can handle before we all kick ourselves.
What did they tell you and do you remember it well?
– My mom told me something she apparently said in her day [Winston] Churchill: Money doesn’t change people, it discovers them.
And Miguel Rellán adds to what his mother told him, what had been said before by the English politician, statesman and historian, whose slippers and a glass of brandy were even auctioned. “It’s,” he says, “like when I hear someone’s been a jerk since he’s famous. And isn’t it earlier that he used to be an idiot and now, as he is famous, we have realized?
And what usually doesn’t happen to him?
– I’m not bored. Listening to people saying that they are very bored during the lockdown, I wondered: ‘How is it possible, with the thousands of books out there to read? If we were in the 17th century but now you can be confined to a room with access to all the cinema you want. I could not have been isolated for 24 days, but 24 years.
What would be useful?
– We all think stupid things, all of us, but the wise keep them silent. We are in a time when people without a filter let go of the first thing that comes to mind, there you go! For example, we already know that social networks are the equivalent of the bar of your life, where there was always someone, with the fourth gin and tonic already in the body, saying something stupid; but it got no further than there. But now… At least the drunk man could tell you the next day, “Forgive me, I screwed up.” But it’s that all these… The lack of respect and education in the fecal networks is terrifying.
What kind of society do we have?
– A society, in general, banal, superficial, consumerist, noisy, rushed, very stupid in general and very influenced by fashion. A society that is terrified of silence, among other things. All the proverbs, which I don’t know why they are Arabic and not Czechoslovak, are mostly right. One says, “If you can’t improve the silence, shut up!” Another question I think we can ask is: ‘Why are we in such a hurry?’ Hurry, hurry, hurry…; Recently, a friend told me that an acquaintance of hers had become very angry because his plane from Los Angeles had arrived in Madrid twenty minutes late. But, look, you idiot, you just crossed the Atlantic! Let’s see, the fact is that as soon as you are careless you are one of the herd again, you have to pay attention to that too
What is not possible?
– You can’t live alone. That wonderful loneliness thing is great as a story, but in reality it can’t be, because we are social creatures and need others. How not to lose hope. It’s true that the negative makes a lot of noise: every idiot with two drinks jumps a crosswalk and kills a man or a woman, and it’s news. Now it is not the case that a team of people is working in silence for hours on an organ transplant. And I, for example, as long as there are people who know their work very well and practice it very well, with dedication and for the good of all, I will have hope.
What are you not in doubt about?
– I may have the face of an idiot, but I am not: I have known for a long time that, as I said before, I am going to die. Plus, I’m 79 tacos and about the age to move to another neighborhood; no one is going to say ‘damn, how young he was!’. If you must sink your beak, sink your beak! Many people have died and nothing happens, the world goes on, although, I insist, I’d rather be here.
What have you come to think?
– I think we all think at some point, now that the pandemic is so terrible, that ‘what we are going through is going to change people’. And no, good people are still good people, and assholes are still good people. I was now reading things about these rogues from the mask purchase commissions, Luis Medina [hijo del duque de Feria y de la modelo de alta costura Naty Abascal] and this one [su socio Alberto Luceño Cerón], who have received a commission of 6 million euros. Fortunately, besides these bastards, there are still great people who, with the pain of others, take an awful lot of money in commissions to spend on luxury cars.
What else doesn’t come to mind?
– When we talk about Spain, there are three fundamental things that are missing in this country and that nobody cares about. They are, in alphabetical order and with a safe sound: education, education and education. With all that implies. And that aside, we are in a time when it is clear that greed is dominant in the world. First me, and save yourself who can! The fact that there are many people who have a hard time getting warm because they can’t afford gas or electricity doesn’t matter to those who fill their pockets. It cannot be that a third of humanity is starving and that a few accumulate such enormous wealth. There we also have this gentleman [Elon Musk] who bought Twitter for $44 billion, but how much money does this man have? I don’t understand people’s minds.
And despite everything…
– Fortunately, although we are now with the war in Ukraine, what we missed, has caught us on the right side of the world, where we were born and live, because despite all the sadness, we are on the right side good ; You already know that typhoons and tsunamis occur in the other part, as well as terrible famines… Here we are wonderful, with our wine, our beer, and delighted with life, we live like God. Until suddenly a virus appeared, something invisible, and everything faltered. What a horror film: in the hospital I watched St. Mark’s Square, the Champs-Elysées on television… completely empty. And while the Ice Palace in Madrid was converted into a morgue to house corpses.
What are you doing?
– Max Aub’s grave reads: “I did what I could”. I do what i can.
Are you considering retiring?
– Of course I don’t plan to stop working, why should I? Any reasonably sensible person engaged in creative work will not retire. Is Vargas Llosa, who is already a Nobel laureate, retiring? Is the painter Antonio López retiring? The only thing you can take away is health. But I still have to play King Lear!
There are those who suggest “Lolita,” by Nabokov, or “The Catcher in the Rye,” by Salinger, or…
-… that we are fools, that there is a part of the world that has become an idiot. That makes no sense. It’s bullshit, but they don’t stop to include their danger. It’s not a wave of conservatism, it’s a wave of utter stupidity. Everyone insulted without stopping insulting everyone, everyone insulted without stopping to get into the lives of others.
Political what?
– My grandfather, a very educated person who influenced me a lot, when I was little, he said to me ‘Look Gary’, he called me Gary because I was tall and thin like Gary Cooper, ‘when you hear someone talk about his ideology, of what he thinks, of how he is, listen to him with respect and, when the meeting is over, follow him and observe what he does. You are what you do, not what you say. It seems to me that you must act. My grandfather was the one who discovered that I am a leftist. What can we do [ríe]
How did you experience Marine Le Pen’s good result in the French presidential election?
– A sensible person, like I pretend, well, scared, because the wave, I don’t know if it’s conservatism or far right in the world, of Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro, and here the rise of Vox, is like being scared . Let’s go back, it sounds dandy, gray, black and white again, a ban, those soldiers who said not long ago that I don’t know how many millions of Spaniards had to be shot. I hope we respond. It is also true that when the time comes, the left – we are much more critical – abstain rather than vote. Go vote, man!
How was your experience with ‘An Evening with the Classics’?
– Beautiful. Why was Shakespeare created? Why are you doing “Richard III” or “Macbeth”? Because you’re talking about now, because man is still the same. How is the war in Ukraine different from the Peloponnesian war? Now with tanks and formerly on horseback. Humans are just as awesome and bastard. If all has been said in ‘The Iliad’ and in ‘The Odyssey’. Homer told it all and Shakespeare finished it. And as for our classics, what a miracle, what a beauty, what an intelligence! Now, all the greats talk about four fundamental things of truth: love, death, power, sex, and what follows: jealousy, betrayal, loyalty… The Americans, being very pragmatic, say it all boils down to two things : someone who is looking for something or someone who runs away from something. He had yet to work in the theater with Don Adolfo Marsillach, and now, thanks to his daughter Blanca [juntos en escena]I have the opportunity to pay him tribute and even, through technology, we recite some poems together. Beautiful poems by Lope de Vega, Calderón, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz…
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
