The Last Day of Paco de Lucía
EDITORS NOTE: This is our Translation of an article which was published in Spanish online at EL PAÍS TV along with some photos and Videos. All rights remain with...
SOURCE: http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/02/27/actualidad/1393475880_214008.htmlThis article was translated for the ease of our non-Spanish speaking readers.
The Last Day of Paco de Lucía
How Paco de Lucia Died
The family secludes themselves in the lair of the artist, located in front of the Caribbean, waiting for the repatriation of the body.Paco de Lucia and Juan Anyélica fishing in the Mexican Caribbean.This Wednesday, at Paco de Lucia’s beach, only he is missing. About 20 tourists, mostly American, sunbathe in Balinese beds. The neighbors of the artist, also foreigners, bathe in a private pool docked on the sand. They had not heard of his death and received the news with an astonishment face, as if they had never known they were living beside a musical legend. In Xpu-Ha, a place in the Mexican Caribbean, halfway between Playa del Carmen and Tulum, no one notices the signs of "No trespassing, private property" that protect the farm of El Flamenco, or Marta Poot, a friend of the family, who is sitting on the white sands crying. “There won’t be another Paco de Lucía," she says.The artist arrived in Mexico on Sunday; he came from Cuba. In the last years he liked to spend time on the island. There, as he used to say, their children, aged 13 and eight, could play in the street as children used to do in Spain in the old days. Those who saw Paco said he looked thinner and he looked a bit anxious; he had stopped smoking two weeks ago. Mexico was, until his last day, his “retirement place”. On a beach with turquoise waters he built a paradise to which he escaped occasionally to hide from touring and the spotlight. Amid lush vegetation and with direct access to the sea, the genius of Algeciras barely left his house.On Tuesday afternoon, Paco planned to meet with his friend Juan de Anyélica, who was 46 and lived in Mexico, but was born in Madrid and was brought up in Seville; he was also a musician. Juan called him from a fish shop in which he stood by the road. Paco had asked the artist to buy some boquinetes for dinner. They were going to spend another long night working in the studio. El Flamenco had something new in his mind.In Xpu-ha, the sun sets just before six. At that time on Tuesday, Paco was playing with his son Diego on the sand when he began to feel ill. He went to the hospital of Playa Del Carmen with his wife Gabriela. Juan was already waiting for them there, with fresh boquinetes in the car. Paco clung onto his arm and could barely speak. He still had the strength to cry out for a doctor, Juan said. Then he fainted. The work of resuscitation lasted nearly an hour, but the Master was gone. He was 66.His family said goodbye to him in the hospital and since then they have locked themselves in his house. They are accompanied by his closest friends: Juan and his wife Marta Poot, who come out at sunset to silently watch the sea, Gabriela, her mother, and their two children. Closed to the public, the corpse of the guitar player awaits in a funeral parlour in Cancun to be repatriated to Spain, where many tributes are being prepared to honour the last of their dead geniuses.At the Mayan Riviera, not many knew El Flamenco very well, who was visiting the area since the late 80's, always running away from the masses in his desire to find there the perfect disconnection from his “other” world. His first home was in Playacar, an exclusive area next to Playa del Carmen. Iván Ebergelyi, then manager of the residential area, helped him find it. "He visited it a lot; he did enjoy going fishing and cooking fish with rice," he says.In the nearly 20 years that he spent his summers in that property, hotels and tourists multiplied at the same rate than his numerous visits to Mexico. Determined to remain independent, Paco y Gabriela decided to buy a property farther away. The house was built by a Spanish friend of his in 2002 and the artist himself planted all the flowers on the farm, which now only allows seeing the typical straw roof of the house. Until hours before his death, the artist was working in the garden.Far from the silence of the house, to which not even a curious person approaches, the procedures to repatriate the corpse consumes the time of Javier Marañón, the Consul of Spain in Cancun, , who had not sleep since Paco’s death . The only direct flight to Madrid leaves on Friday and the option of a stop is complicated. Marañón says the best option is taking a private jet that costs, he estimates, about $ 90,000. El Flamenco was insured with the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores 1(SGAE), which will take care of the transfer. "But you know how insurances companies are..," said the consul.When the corpse and the family arrive in Spain, what was silence in Mexico will become a bustle, as was Paco’s life. "This seems so unreal that I often think that he can show up at any moment," says his friend Juan at the door of his house.In Xpu-ha it gets dark for the first time without the guitarist. Please visit the original article at - http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2014/02/27/actualidad/1393475880_214008.html