Nacho Cano presents ‘Malinche’: “It makes me horny when they attack me”

The founder of Mecano stands in the center of the bar, in front of the cast that is distributed around and on top. As is already known, Chanel is not here nor is she expected, no longer plays the leading role. Nobody seems to remember her, nor does Cano himself name her, but she is still the protagonist of the video that is played automatically on the website that sells the tickets.

“It is not an easy project because of the subject matter,” says Cano. The story that the musical announces is that of the “birth of miscegenation”: “The love between the protagonists” —the Spanish soldier Hernán Cortés and the indigenous woman Malinche— that “anticipates the union between Mexico and Spain”. Nacho Cano had this revelation when he moved to Miami in 2010 and has been pursuing this story ever since. “Malinche is the mother of miscegenation and the most important woman in the history of America,” he firmly affirms before the media.

A less romanticized interpretation of the founding of Mexico posits the alliance between Malinche and Cortés as a political strategy that allowed the Spanish conquerors to impose themselves on the Mexica, in alliance with other indigenous peoples. Thanks to this, Cortés became governor of Mexico. “We are going to the beautiful part of the human being”, answers Nacho Cano to the question of whether the musical picks up the political consequences of “romance”. “We are going to get the best, the work of artists is to make beauty out of the worst. We don’t analyze who is good or bad, for us they are all good and history has misjudged one and the other”, he explains. “All of us here sell emotions,” he adds.

accustomed to attacks

“We are going to receive criticism because [el del musical] It is a topic that generates opinion, as it probably received them Jesus Christ Superstar either avoid but the important thing is that people see it because things happened there that have marked the world as it is”, says the director of Malinche.

To get to this moment, Cano has previously gone through a documentary on Netflix, a model to build a pyramid on a plot of land in the Madrid neighborhood of Hortaleza, the abandonment of the leading actress after representing Spain in Eurovision and a bow to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, when she was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of May 2. Due to his relationship with the Madrid government, the artist feels “attacked”. “I get attacked… sometimes,” he says wryly. “No one likes to be shot, but I’ve been doing this professionally for 42 years, and maybe it’s just that being attacked makes me horny,” he says. “I pay, thanks to my investors, 150 payrolls and almost all those who attack me do not pay a single one. The attack is part of life although it should start now that we put the Show underway, until now it could only be speculation”, he adds.

“I supported Isabel Díaz Ayuso because she and [la concejala de Cultura, antes en Ciudadanos] Marta Rivera de la Cruz kept the theaters open during the pandemic, a very brave act that did not happen in the United States or Australia, and thanks to that we were able to continue paying people. My support was an act of personal gratitude for his attention to the artists”, affirms Nacho Cano as he already explained in the aforementioned medal award ceremony which, according to him, has brought him “an excessive attack by his enemies”.

The land where Cano originally wanted to install a temporary theater to represent Malinche It is a municipally owned area of ​​19,500 square meters whose transfer was granted without competition or public competition and which provoked harsh criticism from the opposition in Madrid, which spoke of “favorable treatment” to a businessman who is a friend of the PP. Just a few days before the transfer of the Hortaleza land for four years became known, the regional president had spent part of her vacation in a luxurious mansion that Nacho Cano has in Ibiza.

“Díaz Azuso could not give me a favor treatment because the space [de Hortaleza] Citizens managed it, not her. It was all a lie. They have given me a cane for being the way I am but I will continue to be, ”she says.

Celebrate Mexico without Mexicans

Of that great pyramid whose model showed the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, in the Netflix documentary, there is now a much smaller one, at the back of the stage, which opens in two to the sides. Like a tour guide, speaking into the microphone, Cano leads and leads the large group of journalists through the proscenium, making his way through the guts of that pyramid of props, entering one frame and exiting the other, discovering the mechanisms of the plot

Meanwhile, the singers and dancers wait and watch, roles reversed, in the first rows of the stalls, dressed in official black shirts, with the same face that gives the image to the event and that can be found in the assortment merchandise from the store: caps, t-shirts or bottles. Without Chanel, the new Malinche is the Mexican Andrea Bayardo. When asked by the press about the nationalities of the cast, only one is Mexican. She appears Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea. All the others are Spanish: “From Madrid, from Seville, from Catalonia, from Torrejón de Ardoz…”. “It was clear to me that Mexico had to be there, because, deep down, this is a celebration of Mexico, a celebration of the good things that happened,” explains Nacho Cano.

Asked for details about the relationship with Mexico and the support received there, Cano affirms that he had the advice of the Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico and that he invited the wife of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to a pass there and “he liked it quite a bit. ”.