The residents of Plaza de los Frutos have made history. With more than 4,400 episodes broadcast on the two stages, Amar es para siempre (from 2005 to 2012 called Amar en tiempo revueltos and broadcast on La 1; from 2013 Amar es para siempre on Antena 3) is the Spanish feature film production with the most chapters of the story. Written between 1936 and 1982, the story followed the political and social changes in Spain through several families. The series bows out at the top of its time slot (in 2024 it will reach an average of 1.2 million viewers, with a market share of 11.8%). Today, Wednesday, he says goodbye on Antena 3 with a prime time episode (10:50 p.m.). His place at the after-dinner table will be taken by another series, Dreams of Freedom.
More than 1,600 actors visited Amar and shot 41,300 sequences across 300 sets. From Chapter 1 to the last, only three interpreters remain in the fiction. Marcelino, Manolita and Pelayo, the family that runs the legendary bar El Asturiano, are Manu Baqueiro, Itziar Miranda and José Antonio Sayagués, who answer our questions by phone. The latter assures that he misses waking up at five in the morning since filming wrapped in October. Life after Amar is treating her well: Itziar Miranda already has several film projects and will host a show on Aragón TV. It had to be from here, and Manu Baqueiro is still touring theaters and appearing in the series What Are You Waiting For? ?, also for Antena 3.
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Questions. Do you remember your first day at Amar?
Itziar Miranda. Perfect, because tonight we will see something very beautiful and generous on the part of the two broadcasters who accompanied us, the first sequence of Amar, namely with Manu. The director was Eduardo Casanova, who is now the director of the series. He is from Zaragoza, so am I, and I felt very accompanied, very cared for… We were two children and we wanted to build these figures, and I remember thinking a lot about my grandmother, what she was like, her gestures …
Manu Baqueiro. I was nervous. Before there was another Marcelino, about 10 chapters had been recorded, but I wasn't convinced and from one day to the next they asked me to jump on the bandwagon. I had a scene with Pelayo in the bar, and he told me, “You're going to be my son,” and I told him, “And you're going to be my father.” I remember thinking, “Start, to create this character because you're against the clock and there's no scope.” I immediately connected with José Antonio and the team, they gave me a lot of freedom. One director told me, “He’s a glass-half-full guy. From then on we are in your hands because we are against time.” I think I ended it on a good note considering how far we have come.
José Antonio Sayagues. It was episode 0. I did it and the next day it had to be repeated because the actor changed and that's when Manu Baqueiro appeared. I thought, “Wow, I must have done really badly because I have to do it again.” Then they gave me a package of sequences and I shouldn't have done so badly because it was a big package. It was a very important moment as an actor, like it opened a door. I had this intuition. When I went from Salamanca to Madrid to do castings and they didn't catch me, and again and again, I always had the idea that after so many hits with the horseshoe, at some point I would hit the nail on the head, and so on it happened. .
Manu Baqueiro, Itziar Miranda and José Antonio Sayagués, in El Asturiano from “Amar es para siempre”. Manuel Fiestas Moreno
Q What was it like shooting your final sequence?
I AM. It was absolutely exciting. I say the last sentence of the series and I couldn't remember it, it was incredible. I've never failed with text, I have a long memory. But he couldn't remember the last sentence. When we got to the moment where they could always say, “Cut, it was good, love is forever up to this point”… I'm looking forward to telling you about it. I could not. We had to come back to it several times before I finally said it.
MB Emotions, tears… I had many flashbacks to moments I had experienced. It was a sequence that took me back to past moments, with the whole family reunion… I wanted to fight those emotions to be focused and prevent the emotional wildness that arose later, but it was difficult. I remember it as a catharsis, all the emotions came out, and even though the film took longer to make, it was an ending full of affection and love. There are three characters full of love, and that's the end, the last sequence and the last shot.
YES It was a very difficult sequence to pull off from an interpretive point of view because it was very steeped in emotion. It was with Manu Baqueiro, who for me is like my son, and it was very difficult to interpret him without getting carried away by the emotional current. I think in our sequence we skipped the script, we went into the idea, it went beyond the text.
An image of the final chapters of “Amar es para siempre”, provided by Antena 3.Manuel Fiestas Moreno
Q If you had to pick one moment in your character's journey over these 19 years, what would it be?
I AM. I think there was a before and an after with Marisol's death. It was very brutal for such a beloved character to have his daughter die in Madrid in the 80s due to a drug problem. I remember there was a moment this year when I was very sad at home because I was carrying things about the character, but it was hard to process those feelings.
MB So much has happened… But I would say that he learned a lot from the women in his family, from Manolita, from Luisita… They changed his way of thinking and accepted a lot of things that a man would have find it difficult to accept this time. He has grown a lot because of the female figures in his family.
YES The arc is very large and with many emotional relationships, all codes, from comedy, tragicomedy, melodrama… A whole kaleidoscope of feelings and ways of acting. I would stick with the worldview that sailing these wonderful waters represented for me.
Manu Baqueiro, Itziar Castro and José Antonio Sayagués, like Marcelino, Manolita and Pelayo, when the series was still called “Love in Troubled Times”.
Q Why did Amar manage to stay on air for 19 years? What makes it different?
I AM. Firstly, the best audience any fiction can dream of, completely loyal. We told the story of how Spain pays tribute to our parents, our grandparents and the generation that lived through the transition, and we told it with a lot of truth, a lot of tenderness, a lot of love and also a lot of pain and humor.
MB The writers and directors saw a very good opportunity in preserving some of the characters who had established themselves and acted undercover, and renewing the rest so as not to tire them out. And a very good point that we had to see was when we focused on these characters in the first few years and gave them a touch of comedy and freshness because the other plots were very intense.
YES It had a very important head of government, Eduardo Casanova [director de la serie]a great commanding captain and an exceptional team with the great advantage that we were all in the same boat and rowing in the same direction.
Manu Baqueiro and José Antonio Sayagués, in “Amar es para siempre”.Manuel Fiestas Moreno
Q What did you learn from your character?
I AM. His courage, his strength, his sense of humor, his sensitivity… He experienced many things before me, in a way he taught me. She was a mother before me, she was married before me, she suffered loss before me. We have to thank the screenwriters for that, they are the creators and with Manolita they have written a gem of a character.
MB So many things… His kindness, his love, his humility, his part of Peter Pan, he wants to be surprised by everything, play with everything like a child… But most of all he is generous and very committed to others .
YES Pelayo is a multi-faceted character, he has many edges. It is based on very deep philosophical foundations such as the Stoic ones, it has a lot to do with Don Quixote, Sancho, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Nietzsche, Heraclitus, the classics… All of this changed my life from a spiritual point of view. I am no longer the same as I was at the beginning, fortunately my self is different.
Q Did you pick up any physical souvenirs from the series or the character?
I AM. Manolita glasses, the tailored skirts and various Manolita things.
MB The family album with a thousand photos from all these years that I look at at home and bring a little tear to my eye when I remember the seasons, so many people, our development. I took an Atleti scarf and I'm from Madrid, but I had to take this embroidered scarf because Marcelino is a mattress fan. I have an Asturian menu and something else.
YES The glasses that symbolize Pelayo. For me it's close-up glasses, prescription glasses.
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