Italian actress Marina Salvarezza remember who arrived in Ecuador in August 1976. in order to participate in the inauguration of the school in Valdivia, owned by his sister-in-law. But in his visit there was also the illusion that he knows Latin America and of course Guayaquil, the city he is from her husband Alberto Garcia. But her stay extended to more than 40 years, as she fell in love with the Pearl of the Pacific and convinced her husband to stay and live here.

‘Panas’, a comedy series created by friends for friends with a significant age difference

“I loved Guayaquil”, declares one of the first Italians to settle in the city and one of the great references of performing arts in the country.

From Guayaquil, he loves weather, trees and people. “I like the heat, I like to live like this with flip-flops, a little blouse, I don’t like to create a problem of elegance,” says the actress while enjoying the refreshing breeze coming from the mouth of the Salado River. She also admits that her husband, being from Guayaquil, “had more problems adjusting,” having lived in Italy for almost 12 years.

“I believe that Guayaquil has enormous potential… I feel that it is a special city… instinctively Guayaquil is a fantastic city“, points out Salvarezza, who does not deny that social reality has made her think about returning to her homeland on several occasions.

In the beginning, she did not speak Spanish very fluently, and this, she says, brought her “a few hiccups”, because on one occasion she called a person “toad”, not realizing that it was a secret nickname, and not a name like her. thought.

During his stay, he suggested knocking on the doors of some cultural spaces in the country. He graduated in theater in Milan, and finding a job in that field was his mission. One of the first places he went was the Casa de la Cultura, the center of Guayas, but then he was disappointed with what he found. – The cultural center was like a warehouse of old furniture, with mice.

A year later, in 1977, he entered the workshop of the El Juglar group, from Ernesto Suarez where he found those who would become his lifelong friends such as Azucena Mora, Miriam Murillo, Augusto Enriquez, Oswaldo Segura, Laura Suarez, among others. “With my colleagues from El Juglar, we are bound by eternal friendship.”

Since then, Salvarezza began to build an artistic career in the country. Participated in television productions such as Sangurimas, Death comes tomorrow, For self-love and in movies like Pieces of life and Life test.

And for more than 20 years he was a professor at Casa Grande University, where in 2009 he opened a career in performing arts. “I am very attached to the university, I am retired, but I continue to teach”. He is currently dedicated to the production of plays at the Casa Museo, where he keeps the original puppets Anna von Buchwald, the forerunner of puppets in the country.

Teaching also took place in a virtual and private way, as it offered language lessons. She studied German, French and English, but also teaches Italian.

Although He claims to be an expert at preparing spaghetti, He openly admits that he is not very good at cooking, even with hundreds of cookbooks. “The recipes don’t turn out the way I want them to,” he says. Add that His favorite Ecuadorian dish is llapingacho and locro de papas. “It’s good to eat here,” he says, mentioning other delicacies such as dried chicken, baked fish and others.

love and his family

Salvarezza met the love of his life in Milan, still a high school student, at the age of 17. After five years, they got married in Italy, when she was 22 years old. And this year they celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary.

As a result of their love, two children were born: Verónica, 48 years old, and Pier Lorenzo, 44 ​​years old.

At just 18, the Ecuadorian went to live in Italy to follow his sister, a soprano Teresa Garcia Franca (died 2006), who was studying at the Conservatory in Milan at the time.

He says they don’t have the same taste in movies, but they share his taste in reading and art.. In the middle of this interview, his preference for films with a tense, psychological and police undertone comes to the fore.

Marina and her husband came to live in Ecuador two years after they got married. Since he is an only child, it was difficult for his parents to accept this decision, especially when they had already grown to love their first granddaughter. But as the years passed, they assimilated it, and every school vacation on the Ecuadorian coast they excitedly welcomed their two grandchildren in Italy.

Every year he travels to Italy to stay in the house left to him by his mother, who died in 2020, at the age of 98, from COVID.

While her mother was alive, Marina traveled at least every three months to take care of her and keep her company. Marina always wanted mom to come live with her, but she never allowed it. So for a while he divided his time between Ecuador and Italy.

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