100 years of the birth of Lola Flores, the ‘Pharaoh’ who read Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s hand

He doesn’t sing, he doesn’t dance, but don’t miss it. Despite popular belief, no one wrote this about Lola Flores, also because it would be a lie. Of course she sang and danced and of course it was not to be missed because it was a torrent of talent.

It was January 21, 1923, it was cold in Jerez de la Frontera, sure, and then she arrived, María Dolores Flores Ruiz. Lola. A whirlwind of talent coming from local schools He attracted so much attention as to start in the cinema at the age of 17.

Shortly after, he would fill the theaters for several seasons together with Manolo Caracol with the show Zambra, which left him with bittersweet memories throughout his life. Knowing that Lola had a debt with her parents of about 50,000 pesetas at the timea lot of money, the producer offered to give it to her in exchange for sex.

When she returned the money to her parents, crying, she begged them never to ask how she got it. The successes came and the status of a star was never lowered.

Lola Flores was part of that group of essential folkloric women of the time such as Carmen Sevilla, and Hostess of the best parties in Madrid: Ava Gardner, who did not miss one, was at the baptism of her son Antonio Flores.

If it was already popular, television multiplied its success among the people. He had so much charisma He came to read Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s palm and predicted that he would have “a very long life”.

In 1992, already diagnosed with cancer, He knew how to laugh at his own mistakes: “May this year bring us health, that we love each other a lot and that there is money for the Treasury, but also for one another”.

On May 16, 1995, he left us, yes, all of us. The whole of Madrid was paralyzed by the passage of the funeral procession. “In forty-odd years they have not stopped loving me,” La Faraona said one day. And if you knew, Lola, that 27 years later we have not stopped doing it.