The eternal smile of Carmen Sevilla, her natural charm and simplicity went out this Tuesday at the age of 92 as a result of a long illness. She has been away from public life for more than a decade, in 2012 she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Her physical deterioration forced her son Augusto Algueró, who lived with her in Madrid, to admit her to a nursing home, where she has lived for the last few years. From there she was transferred last Sunday to a Madrid hospital after her state of health worsened.
Carmen García Galisteo was born in the Sevillian neighborhood of Heliópolis on October 16, 1930. The daughter of Antonio García Padilla ‘Kola’ and Florentina Galisteo Ramírez, she was the eldest of three siblings. Since she was little, she felt called by the tables, so she soon began singing and dancing. At the age of twelve, she went on stage for the first time with the Estrellita Castro company, with the show ‘Rapsodia española’, starring Paquita Rico. She later became part of the Príncipe Gitano and Paco Reyes companies.
‘The Bride of Spain’
The beauty of Seville, nicknamed ‘The Bride of Spain’, did not go unnoticed by film producers. In this way, in 1947 she made her debut on the big screen with ‘Serenata española’, directed by Juan de Orduña. From that moment her career was relentless, starring in titles that are already the history of Spanish cinema and that were successful at the box office such as ‘Sister Saint Sulpice’, ‘Imperial Violets’, ‘La Pícara millera’ or ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. .
In 1957 he starred in the film ‘La venganza’ by Juan Antonio Bardem, the first Spanish film to be awarded the International Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival. From those years she is ‘King of Kings’, a macro-production directed by Nicholas Ray, which was shot in Spain, in which she plays María Magdalena.
By then Carmen Sevilla was one of the usual artists in the musicals of the new TVE, whose appearances were combined with the cinema and the theater. On February 23, 1961, she married the composer Augusto Algueró. Her only son, Augusto, was born from the marriage.
The end of the Franco regime and the pseudo-eroticism prior to the arrival of the uncovering lead Carmen Sevilla to participate in titles such as ‘Teaching a scoundrel’, ‘A decent adultery’, ‘The virgin wax’ or ‘It is not good that the man be alone’, in which the actress showed off her statuesque figure. In 1972 she starred in ‘Mark Antony and Cleopatra’, alongside Charlton Heston, and six years later she shot her last film, ‘Faces’.
From the “sheep” to the “Telecupón”
The death of Algueró and her subsequent wedding on September 5, 1985 with the film producer Vicente Patuel made the artist move away from the stage, to move her residence to the couple’s estate, in Herrera del Duque (Badajoz). That is where Seville would raise her famous “sheep”.
With the advent of private television, Carmen Sevilla returns to the fore again. It was the filmmaker Valerio Lazarov, then director of Telecinco, who called her in 1991 to present the ‘Telecupón’. For six years she starred in a space, where the audience followed every night of her famous oversights and blunders that the artist saved with all naturalness and the salt shaker that characterized her throughout her life. In the Fuencarral network, she also presented galas and variety shows such as ‘The nap is over’, ‘Give yourself a break’, ‘Tomorrow they will be stars’ with Manolo Escobar, ‘Can we do it?’ and ‘Live with you’. Antena 3 signed her in 1999 to star in the series ‘Ada Madrina’, a project that did not work out. Later she presented the program ‘La noche de Carmen’.
In 2000, the actress was widowed again and had to sell her farm, so she returned to Madrid. Three years later, what was her last great audience success would arrive. TVE calls her to replace José Manuel Parada at the helm of ‘Cine de barrio’. The actress fulfilled the task every Saturday afternoon, until December 14, 2010, the day she recorded her last program. She was replaced by Concha Velasco.
The public asked for Carmen Sevilla, who used to be seen walking along Madrid’s Paseo de Rosales. The last public appearance of hers was made by her on the occasion of her 81st birthday, in 2011. However, the bad news would not take long to arrive. In April 2012, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative disease that her mother had already suffered. A few months ago it was learned that the actress, one of the most beautiful on the Spanish scene, could barely speak and no longer recognized her loved ones, for which she was admitted to a nursing home. The nurses and caregivers who cared for her at her home could do little about her deteriorating physical condition.
During his professional career, he received many awards. Among them are the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos Award (1955), the National Syndicate of Show Award (1956), the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos Award (1970), or the TP de Oro award (1993) for his professional career.
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