he was the queen the Spanish musical revue. She was the Latin American vedette that triumphed in Spain showing her silhouette at the most important theaters. She sang with a personal style and was a charismatic woman, the choice of the aristocrats and the military in their jolly nights. She was also the choice of the common man who saw her as something unttainable. Her success spanned through all the periods of the political life of Spain: monarchy, the Republic and the Franco regime. Curiously, during Franco’s dictatorship she had no trouble. Because of that some people thought she was akin to the regime, but in fact I think she had no kind of ideologic or political idea in her head.

Instead her private life was rather the counterfigure of the model of woman that the Franco policy would promote. Her easy living, her lovers, her lesbian innuendo and the scandals were not precisely features of the female model in vogue at that time. However, all this did not damage either her career or her public acclaim in Spain. She was an untouchable idol.

She was born in Buenos Aires city and had started her showbusiness career by singing tangos. Then in 1925, she arrived in Madrid and the Spanish capital adopted her as its own daughter. It tucked her in, lover her, called her Doña Celia or simply La Celia and gave her the place of privilege reserved only for a few people.

She recorded different tangos, among which we remember “Pato”, “Cicatrices”, “La cumparsita”, “Un tropezón”, “La cieguita”, “Trago amargo”, “Noche de reyes”, “A media luz”, “Mi caballo murió”. There is a story connected with her recording career which reveals her wit and spontaneity. When she was cutting a sample disc with Faustino Bretaño they began to make jokes by telling stories which were so funny that later the recording producer asked them to repeat them in the final record but despite they tried it several times it did not turn out as the first time.

Her specialty was the revue, she had her own theater company. Her boom was the picaresque play Las Leandras, written by González del Castillo, Muñoz Román and Francisco Alonso. This revue was on the billboard for over two years, and was staged uninterruptedly throughout Spain. Then Celia, acclaimed until then on all the stages she had been, was definitively raised to the category of national myth. The public made her its own and she was forever La Celia.

Indisputable queen in the forties, she appeared in musical comedies with the best choreographers and scenographers of Spain. She gracefully sang tangos, cuplés and schottis. Her success is curious because she was not an extraordinary beauty, nor had a great voice, and neither was she a consummate dancer but she had a personality and a magnetism that filled the scene and touched her admirers.

In her long career the movies were not absent. She was starred in several motion pictures: Murió el Sargento Laprida (1937), El Diablo con Faldas (1938), Rápteme Usted (1940), Las Leandras (1969), Mi Hijo No es Lo que Parece (1974), El Bromista (1981).

There an scandalous anecdote concerning the day of her wedding. In 1944, she married a physician, José Manuel Goenaga, at the Basilica of the Jerónimos of Madrid. On the stairs of the temple a great number of people with flowers were waiting. They were willing to pay tribute to her, to acclaim her. But an scandal sprang up. They did not accept seeing her dressed in white and, in an over-exaggerated reaction, part of the public tried to take off her dress. Celia was holding the arm of the best man General Millán Astray —he was suspected of being her lover— who shouted: «Legion, come to me!» and the members of the legion present protected the bride and groom by entering to the church with them and helping them later to go out through a back door.

Of course her married life was short. Meanwhile Celia’s showbusiness career had no ups and downs and she kept on working uninterruptedly until around 1966.

She traveled to Paris where she was based for a time with her new husband, Paco Lucientes (journalist, former director of the newspaper Informaciones de Madrid), and thereafter she returned to Madrid and to theater. But things were no more as before so she decided to return to Buenos Aires, her fatherland. But deep in her heart she never forgot her beloved Spain —that had given to her so much— and she came back several times. She was always welcomed. Even today the Spanish people regard her as an artist of the level of Amalia Molina or Pastora Imperio.

And the end finally came. The Alzheimer’s disease caught her and she spent her latter days at a geriatric hospital in Buenos Aires. She died at age 87 and was buried at the Pantheon of the Actors at the Cemetery of Chacarita.