María Barranco resurfaces after hitting rock bottom: "No one can sink me"

Nobody is used to seeing it rain in Torremolinos. Neither is María Barranco, who is spending these days at her house in La Carihuela. "This looks like the west. What a windstorm!" she exclaims with the comic flair that won over Pedro Almodóvar and remains intact despite the years and the damages. Because the actress from Malaga, a two-time Goya winner, has learned that in the sky, as in life, after the storm clouds, light almost always awaits. Sometimes it's just a matter of time. Now she is enjoying a sweet moment after feeling "very lost," a pit she has climbed out of and does not hide: "That's what doctors are for. I got help, did a little dance, and here I am." It's no wonder she was once called La Corcho: "Because no one can sink me." The applause confirms it every night: Barranco is back.

This weekend she will fill the Teatro Cervantes for two consecutive nights (January 30 and 31) with 'Better Not to Say It,' an ironic reflection on relationships in which she shares the spotlight with Imanol Arias, with whom she has been "everything but sweethearts." They met over forty years ago when she was starting out in a hostile Madrid for beginners: "Antoñito (Banderas) introduced me to him and he was already a star. He has always been very generous. He would come to my house, because there were no mobile phones, and tip me off about projects that were being prepared so I could audition. He has been very important in my life."

–And sweethearts, never? Considering the guy is handsome and photogenic.

–Excuse me, am I ugly?

Having crossed the sixty-year threshold, María retains the spontaneity of Candela, the character that changed her life, part of the cast of 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown,' a film that is a living history of Spanish cinema. The amusing naivety of that model in love with a Shiite terrorist, her teapot-shaped earrings, won over half the country. The rest is history: works with Fernando Trueba, Bigas Luna, Julio Medem, Fernán Gómez, or Álex de la Iglesia, five Goya nominations (and two awards, one for 'Women on the Verge...' and another for 'The Ages of Lulu'), critical acclaim, public affection... Also a failed marriage with Imanol Uribe and an economic crisis, difficult situations she always knew how to overcome. Until the pandemic.

Something broke inside her during the months of confinement.

"I know it wasn't something that only happened to me, but I didn't feel like doing anything. I didn't want to think, I just wanted to hide away, for no one to bother me... And when the coronavirus ended, I was still just as lost." It wasn't the first time she had gone through a rough patch. She already knew that the mind often plays bad cards, but she also knew how to break that spiral: "You have to hit rock bottom to rise again, to come back up." That cork-like nature, always floating back to the surface. Now the landscape could not be more different: she has just become a grandmother for the fourth time, is invited as a guest on prime time shows, graces magazine covers, and is touring the country's major theaters, applauded each night. "Now I'm in another moment," she confesses, "but we need to talk about these things to remember them."

Family was crucial in that rebuilding. So were friends, if they are not the same thing. "As Paco Rabal used to say, you need to have friends even in hell. They have always supported me a lot." The opportunity to work under Claudio Tolcachir came by chance, but Barranco knows that there are trains you can't let pass. "It was a play that already had an actress in Argentina, Mercedes Morán, but she couldn't come to Spain and they started looking for another actress." There she was.

–Because I'm like Gila's aunt.

–What do you mean?

–She would go to weddings and, when the priest asked the bride "Do you take this man to be your husband?", she would come out and say "If you don't want him, I'll take him."

Is success sweeter at sixty than at twenty? "Success is always good, anytime," she laughs: "But with 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' everything happened so fast it was dizzying. Now, with maturity, you enjoy things more. It's like having a fine wine instead of going out drinking." Imanol Arias is also on that journey: "It had been twenty years since we last worked together and it's very beautiful how we take care of each other. We ask each other: 'have you taken your pill?' We say: 'I'm going to take you to eat at such and such place, you need to gain a few kilos'... It's been a wonderful reunion." She hears herself and jumps up as if triggered by the pomp of the chosen adjective, always with grace.

–Oh, "wonderful"! I sound like a folk singer.

Her return to the theater, with a character "that more than a tailored suit seems like a bodysuit it's so snug," also represents her reunion with the applause of the audience, an early desire: "I became an actress for the applause. I got into amateur theater and was at the very back, I only had one line, but I listened to how they applauded the lead and it seemed like ecstasy." An ecstasy she now enjoys every night.