José Sacristán donates his grandfather’s “magic” hat and a toy projector to the Cervantes Institute’s Vault of Letters

The Diplomat The Cervantes Institute received a legacy from actor and director José Sacristán (Chinchón, 1937) this Wednesday in its Vault of Letters. The gift includes his grandfather's "magic" hat and a toy image projector, the instrument with which the actor began his connection to the world of cinema. The event was attended by the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, and Sacristán himself. Amparo Pascual, actress, academic, and Sacristán's wife, served as an honorary witness. Sacristán explained that this legacy is related to his work, but above all, to his life. "I am leaving things that are connected to those who, every time I remember them and return to them, inspire me to keep going. Here are my father, my mother, my grandmother, my uncle Francisco, and my aunt Socorro—everyone from that terrible post-war period," he stated. “Here I offer a part of the lives of those from whom I come; in each thing there is a breath, a flow, a recollection, and a memory,” the actor added. Box number 1324 received his paternal grandfather's hat, which he had to wear when “the gentlemen went to funerals, weddings, or baptisms.” “I would climb some stairs and take it out of the cupboard, and when I touched it, it had a magical effect, like Aladdin's lamp. The hat was my first costume as an actor,” he recalled. “The impulse and the meaning behind all this is the wonder of that little boy who, some days, would put on this hat and things would happen to him,” he added. He also contributed some objects from his acting training, always related to family history. These include a NIC cinema, a toy that allowed you to see moving images, and a collection of trading cards. “All this material goes beyond my experience as an actor in post-war Spain, in a pretty messed-up environment: my relationship with the world of acting wasn't about professional discipline; I wanted to be D'Artagnan or Robin Hood,” he explained. Another of the bequeathed items is a notebook belonging to his father, Venancio, who was imprisoned in Ocaña and copied a series of rhymes and poems into it to “pass the time when he was bored.” This document, now part of the Vault of Letters, served Sacristán well for his first recitals. He has also donated a copy of Don Quixote that his father traded in prison for a pack of cigarettes in 1941, as well as the movie programs with which the actor “prolonged the magic of the theater” when he was a child. “It was about reliving things through imagination, and this was my role model; I wanted to be Tyrone Power,” he explained. Other items donated by the actor include a program from the play in which he first performed a character on a Sunday morning, and the program from his debut as an apprentice in 1960 at the Teatro Infanta Isabel in Madrid, where he met Alfredo Landa and worked with Rafael Arcos and Julia Gutiérrez Caba, among others. Also included is the record he made with his "dearest" Concha Velasco, "Yo me bajo en la próxima" (I'm Getting Off at the Next Stop), the facsimile script of the film he directed in 1983, "Soldados de plomo" (Lead Soldiers), and a viewfinder he used to familiarize himself with lenses and sizes for his first film as director. Added to this is a book by Stanislavski with annotations, which he bought in a clandestine bookstore and whose contents, at first, he "didn't understand at all." For his part, Luis García Montero celebrated the induction into the Vault of Letters of an actor whose work “belongs to the sentimental and moral history” of Spain and recalled that Sacristán “knew how to give body and soul to the ordinary citizen, the everyday Spaniard who lived through the changes of a society with doubts and a yearning for freedom.” “His career is that of Spanish cinema: popular and auteur films, comedy and drama, the late Franco era and the transition, democracy and new generations coexist,” he added.

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