From Pastora Imperio to Isabel Pantoja, whom some call “the last folkloric”. Throughout the last two centuries, gossip magazines have been nourished by the sentimental lives of Spanish folkloric women , an inexhaustible source of romances, couples, weddings, separations and various scandals. Concha Velasco already told it; when she said that “mom, I want to be an artist”, her family almost fell apart because the life of a folklorica was comparable for a long time to that of a prostitute. Currently it seems exaggerated, but we are talking about before and during the Franco dictatorship.
Starting with Pastora Imperio, who enjoyed an intense life, from hardship to glory. Breakthrough, brave, proud and pioneer, Pastora had only one husband:the Sevillian bullfighter, Rafael El Gallo, but many loves. Their impossible marriage ended in divorce, although the causes of the breakup were never revealed. After his separation from the right-hander, seven years later, between theater and theater, and after giving him pumpkins -they say- King Alfonso XIII himself , drank the winds for his cousin and friend, Fernando de Borbon, Duke of Durcal, with whom he had his only daughter, Rosario Vega, grandmother of actress Pastora Vega.
It is not that they had more boyfriends than others, it is that the folkloricas were economically free women, not subject to the yoke of marriage, so getting married, divorcing and even remarrying allowed them to flee from the sanctimoniousness and repression suffered by the women of The time.
up to the bigConcha Piquer –mother of the recently deceased Concha Marquez Piquer, divorced from Curro Romero in 1982– had her idylls before marriage and starred in her own soap opera. Despite being married and with three daughters, the bullfighter Antonio Marquez El Belmonte Rubio fell in love with Piquer and ended up getting a divorce in the Second Republic – the Franco regime later prohibited it – to marry her in 1942. Until the date of the wedding is a mystery. That was quite a scandal, since the Church did not recognize their marriage and the birth of their daughter Conchita, in 1943, was not registered since, if it had been done, Concha Piquer would have appeared as a single mother. Hence, Conchita said on numerous occasions that she had been born in Buenos Aires.
Muse of Francoism –and of Hitler– although criticized by the Church, Imperio Argentina married film director Florian Rey , although their marriage was brief. With Ramon Baillo Perez-Cabellos, Count of Las Cabezuelas, he did go through the vicarage, although they later separated. From 1939 to 1941 she had a romantic relationship with the actor Rafael Rivelles.The death of her two children, Florian – who committed suicide – and Magdalena – who gave her five grandchildren – plunged her into deep sadness. Neither were Estrellita Castro
lucky in love (when she finally found stability with Demetrio Corbi, who died a few months before her), nor Antonita Colome,whose first marriage was a childish one that lasted less than a rooster sings, and her second husband made her suffer a lot, although he gave her a daughter.
Less buoyant were the sentimental lives of Juanita Reina and Nati Mistral.The first married the Cádiz-born bailaor Federico Casado , artistically known as Caracolillo , whom she met when she was very young because she danced in his flamenco group. Mistral, focused on her career, married Joaquin Vila Puig, who died in 1995, and she was about to marry actor Tony Leblanc, whom she later cursed for “absorbent and vulgar.”
The tragedy, however, was baited above all with Paquita Rico,whose first husband, the bullfighter Juan Ordonez, committed suicide due to depression when he felt unsuccessful in his work and separated by the dazzling success of his wife. Years later, the artist remarried Guillermo Arocha.
Among the few who had a happy marriage is Marife de Triana, who was married for 45 years – until he died – to Jose Maria Alonso Calvo.
