Juan Margallo, Quijote and Sancho Panza of the Spanish Theater

In 1982 on Raimundo Lulio Street in the Madrid neighborhood of Vallecas Juan Margallo premiered Forgive your people, Lord! (Don’t be eternally angry). Two characters by bicycle, Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, tried to fix the theater problems. Those two characters, who among the laughter of the staff were discussed between burning the theater or committing suicide, summarize the essence of this Extremadura with a living and intelligent look. Margallo was as idealistic as the defender of the popular, as Sancho as Quijote, as sensible as Cabezón.

In that 1982, Margallo had already gone through a lot. He had left his Cáceres and truncated the paternal will that wanted to make him a career military. He had passed as an actor through the hands of the most important directors of the 60s: José Luis Alonso, José Tamayo, Luis Escobar or Miguel Narros himself. And he had left that Madrid somewhat gray where the works of Alfonso Paso were the no more to refound the theater and the world itself with a company that would become a totem of an entire era: tábano.

In 1982 he had already left Tábano in the hands of another recently missing theater figure, Guillermo Heras, had gone around the country as if it were a sock with the work Castañuela 70, He had married his life partner, actress Petra Martínez; And he had reinvented with the Gallo Vallecano, a group with which he would release the aforementioned Forgive your people, sir!, And in which such relevant actors like the sorcerer or Vicente Cuesta.

With his disappearance there is an irreplaceable knowledge, Margallo had a good part of the history and intrahistory of the theater of this country in his head. His career is unbeatable. That is why, in this article I will stop at three moments that may give some light.

The first moment begins with the aforementioned Castañuela 70. Margallo set up this work with other fundamental theateros such as author Luis Matilla (disappeared last November) or Carlos Sánchez. Until that assembly the premieres of Tábano had gone somewhat unnoticed. Assemblies in which, in the words of Margallo himself, they emulated groups such as the American living room. “It was the first theater by correspondence,” Margallo joked to emphasize that they did something they had never seen, that they only knew through magazines. They sought without having referents in a country closed abroad.

Castañuela 70 It was a parody of the last years of Franco, a musical bufo and hooligan who managed to dodge censorship and go on stage at the Madrid Teatro de la Comedia. The success was resounding. There were 74 representations, more than fifty thousand people saw it. There were threats from fascist groups and the authority decided to lower the poster. Given censorship, Tábano decided to make a European tour of cultural centers where Spanish emigration and exile were grouped. He turned without knowing where he was going to sleep and the public was asked if someone could accommodate them.

Apart from the artistic value of the work, which had to have it, even the critic Alfredo Marquerie put them through the clouds, it is that movement of not surrendering, of not conforming, which perfectly describes the character of this theater man. The tour ended at the most important festival in Europe of the moment, the Nancy Festival (France). There Margallo met a person who would change the course of his life and that of the theater of this country, to the director of the Experimental Theater of Cali (Colombia). Enrique Buenaventura was at that festival with two of his most representative works, The hell papers and the assembly of Peter Weiss, Life and death of the Fantoche Lusitano.

Buenaventura is the father of the “collective creation”, a militant theater, where the author’s figures and the director are desacralized and a theater of a huge poetic and artistic power. After meeting him, Tábano was able to visit the Great Theater Festival of America, the Manizales Festival in Colombia. They would travel with y The altabillo of Don Cristobal. There, Margallo and the entire company decided to train with Buenaventura.

In 1973 Tábano and Tec de Cali would make a tour together. Tábano with those two works, the TEC with the next work of Buenaventura, The complaint. They would visit Puerto Rico, Colombia and Venezuela. Behind that tour in which another of the fundamental montages of the time also participated (Dejiofrom the block of Seville by Salvador Távora), were Luis Molina that would later found the Latin American Theater Research Center (Celcit), and José Monleón who from the first act magazine also pushed for a theatrical Pan American project that began to be born with figures such as Augusto Boal in Brazil, Santiago García in Colombia or Atahualpa del Cioppo in Uruguay.

That encounter changed the course of Spanish theater. Margallo champied the introduction of collective creation in Spain and fought all his life for that rich and fertile bridge between the theater of Spain and Latin America. He knew the Extremadura of the health of a theater locked in itself as the one he lived in the 50s and 60s. It is that Quijotismo that would lead Margallo to promote and direct in 1985 the Ibero -American Festival of Cádiz, for example.

The second moment is after that premiere of 1982. Margallo has formed a new company with his partner Petra Martínez, UROC Theater. The independent theater is already in memory, Margallo is already a teacher and reference. He has directed works by Alfonso Sastre, his friend Luis Matilla, has directed Oedipus Rey In Mérida and his daughter Olga already begins to take care of the company. There, in 2001, Margallo decides to ride with Petra a work by Dario Fo, Open couple. They are doing well, they have bowling, the theater of fo, political, popular and full of humor, fits them as a ring to the finger. It is Julio, a long time and is doing functions at the Alfil Theater in Madrid. At the same time on the Paseo de la Castellana there is a great demonstration that has ended in camping. Telefónica’s subsidiary workers, one of the longest labor protests of Spanish democracy. 1,700 workers have stayed on the street, even with nnóminassin to collect. They just mounted what would later be known as the Camp of Hope, a camp that lasted six long years.

“We find the struggle of an ant at an elephant,” said Adolfo Jiménez, president of the Sintel Workers Association. Margallo and Petra decide that on Monday, they have rest and there is no function, they will make a free function in the street for Sintel workers. And so it was done. That commitment perfectly defines the will of this theater man who always defended a quality art that was and for the people.

The third moment is in 2004. Margallo returns to the national dramatic center as an actor with Mr. Ibrahim and the flowers of the Quran. He is happy, enjoying how years ago under the direction of Ernesto Caballero. The function is in the newly inaugurated small space of the María Guerrero Theater, the Princess Room. When the functions are finished in the CDN, the work has to die. It is not projected to turn. A problem, the difficulty of turning with the works produced by the INAEM, which today continues and that Minister Urtasun himself has committed to address in the interview he has given to this newspaper.

“In theory there is nothing to do, you can’t turn,” they say. Margallo still does not give up and asks for a meeting with the director of the CDN at that time, Gerardo Vera. No one knows what happened at that meeting. But he got it. The assembly could turn and the possibility that the works of the CDN could have a later life in co -production with private capital. Margallo ended up winning the Max Prize for the best leading actor in 2006.

This year, the Max of Honor Award has been awarded to Juan Margallo and Petra Martínez. Both already knew it, but it had not yet been made public. His death has precipitated to be known. Two years ago this couple who believed eternal theater has already received the National Theater Award. At that time, Margallo told this newspaper that he was working for the premiere of Until the Alzheimer’s devour me In the Mirador room, a beautiful work in which the author traveled his history and that of his family.

Juan Diego Botto, actor and director of the Chamber, knowing his death published in networks: “One of the most beautiful people I have ever met and a lucid man of unwavering commitment.” A good summary of this fundamental man, Quijote and Sancho at the same time, who imagined a theater for which he fought and always had the proximity of listening to his contemporaries and the youngest who came strongly and never shunned a conversation about a good cloth of wine. Today family and colleagues will say goodbye to the Almudena cemetery.