By the Not So Different team @ntd_la
Editor's Note: While the folks at No tan distintos, our kindred spirits and rock brothers based in Argentina, are emerging from their hiatus and resuming their wonderful stories, we've asked their permission to republish one of their articles. It's time to remember a woman beloved by everyone on the continent. Our focus here at Zonagirante.com remains Latin American culture, and that's why we've decided to honor the marvelous Doña Clotilde.
It will soon be 23 years since the death of María de los Ángeles Fernández Abad, known to everyone as Doña Clotilde. That elderly lady, in a blue dress and a 1950s-style hat, who lived between Doña Florinda and Don Ramón. She was his eternal sweetheart, baking him cakes, smiling at him, and skinny Don Ramón ran away from her without mercy.
El Chavo del 8 is part of the childhood of many generations throughout Latin America, even in Brazil where, Translated into Portuguese, the children know it as El Cháves.
In the neighborhood, Doña Clotilde was known as The Witch of 71, because of the number of her apartment., Although to tell the truth, at first it was number 5. Something similar happened with the character of El Chavo del 8, whose barrel had to be numbered 8 when the series stopped airing on Televisa's Channel 8, the Mexican giant, to move to a channel with a larger audience. But let's return to the number 71, a number that will be repeated throughout Fernández Abad's life. The year he began his life in the neighborhood.
María de los Ángeles was born in Madrid in 1922 and arrived in Mexico in 1947 with a past of struggle that ended in his exile, Despite never renouncing her nationality or seeking refugee status, she was an active anti-fascist militant fighting for what remained of the Spanish Republic in the civil war that lasted three years until 1939. She worked with the guerrillas. and was quickly labeled anti-Franco by the regime and had to leave the country as soon as possible.
He escaped from the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco and lived in Cuba for a while while he sorted out his papers in the city of Havana. Her daughter Paloma Fernández says that her mother, after leaving Cuba, returned to Mexico to work on films by Cantinflas and Arturo Córdova.
At 25, in Mexico, he began working in radio dramas and film, but only many years later, in 1971, She would find the neighborhood that would make her known throughout Latin America. She arrived thanks to Ramón Valdés, with whom she was a great friend. He introduced her to Roberto Gómez Bolaños. That meeting led to 23 years of work that undoubtedly marked her career until the very end. Her friendship with Ramón Valdés was very strong, and when he died in 1988, it was his Doña Clotilde who stood for two hours beside his coffin during his wake.
María de los Ángeles died in 1994 at the age of 71 from lung cancer. aggravated by his addiction to tobacco.
