There it is, resplendent and very united, it has no loss.
Very white hair, very red lips, light sweater, dark pants and a three-quarter black and white that he bought "centuries ago, in a sale in Murcia", as he confesses when I praise his taste, with that immediate complicity that is established between girls who love the rags.
We have met at the Fernán Gómez theater in Madrid, where he premieres the "penultimate" show of his life, when he could be enjoying his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Since she was born, nine months before the Civil War, the daughter of a Basque engineer and an enlightened Catalan bourgeoisie - "I was a good girl who went hungry in fits and starts", she explains ¨— De Yzaguirre has always gone "against the tide", without stopping move in environments where nothing had been lost.
Just his eagerness to try to fix the world before eating it raw.
What is a girl like you doing in a place like this?
Well, strange things, because no one at 85 makes a production in a pandemic, without money and without an audience.
Just a crazy one.
It's as simple as that: I'm crazy about performing arts and women's rights, the two passions of my life.
This work brings them together, and I didn't want to die without doing it.
She says she was a feminist without knowing it.
Explain that to the new ones.
I lived through the war, the postwar period, the dictatorship and now the pandemic, experience is not lacking.
As a child I wanted to be like my brother, and later, like my husband, who was a wonderful man who supported me in everything, but they wouldn't even let you have your own checking account outside.
I started getting involved in women's associations, doing things and saying that out there, no.
There I am.
How much does being a pioneer weigh?
I have no idea of being a pioneer.
I have done things because they had to be done, because it was urgent, because our lives were going to do it.
We met, we informed each other, we pulled on medical friends, and even priests.
This is how we created the first family planning center in Vallecas, before contraceptives were decriminalized in 1978. That way he would go to Bishop Alberto Iniesta, who was called the Red Bishop, to tell the women to pay attention to us, that if they didn't go to have a pregnancy a year and there was no such thing.
What was the pill for you then?
The key to women's freedom.
Control of your body.
Being able to organize your life, your projects, your dreams, without depriving yourself of love for fear of the burden of your children.
And also the key to sexuality.
With her we could begin to play with our pleasure.
Before that, what did they do?
Well, we didn't, look at you.
Didn't you want short answers?
Well there you have it.
Woman, they would do something.
Well, that of getting out and about and those tricks that you talked about with your friends, but that were frustrating and had risks.
We were couples of the same age, we were all in the same closet.
You were doing while you were living.
What has changed your life the most in your 85 years?
Theater.
More than mobiles, more than the women's revolution?
Yes, all that too.
But the theater has the magic that it moves you.
When I started getting to know him, I fell in love with him forever.
It is where I feel happiest in life: before a well-done play that lets me go to my dreams and creates another world that I need, because maybe I don't like the one I have.
He is not a doctor and he set up a clinic.
She is neither an actress nor an author and she does theater.
Are you an intruder?
That's like what the
New York Times said
about Lola Flores: "She doesn't sing, she doesn't dance, don't miss her."
What I have had is passion in life.
I know how to motivate and motivate myself.
I have the force of nature, I love living, working, getting tired.
Work has made me a person and has given me everything.
But I also love cooking and making a table of 20 people happy.
Is there pleasure at 85?
I guess so, but I'm quite far from the one you're talking about.
My joy of living is getting up in the morning motivated and happy because you have a job or a passion that fills your hours.
I get up at seven and I'm in a hurry because I think I'm late for the sites.
After 30 years producing theater, what do you know about someone else's ego?
I respect him a lot because there are people who deserve it.
They are divos and divas, yes, but those people make you dream and that is not paid for with anything.
I get like a trigger between their legs and purr at them because they need it.
They are a little crazy, like me.
Do you envy them?
I don't envy anything, but I do feel envied.
I notice that some things are not well understood around, and people leave you a little aside, as if to say: this one, why is he doing this too, what is it about?
Does success isolate?
Yes. And I tell you because I have been with eminent people, very important, with great brains, and more alone than one, both them and them.
And when you start to stand out, it is rare that people with good intentions approach you.
I went from being the black sheep in my family to being the whitest, and not everyone gets along.
How does a self-taught feminist view feminists today?
Well, some do not know anything.
Why should you be screaming so much and going to the extreme when every day you can help women to be stronger, to study, to make themselves seen and to assert themselves.
It is that women still do not see us.
If you have to choose someone, they choose a man, not even on purpose, it is because if there is a woman, they do not see her.
And we are.
Look, I have one who is learning to fly an airplane.
Oh my gosh, that didn't occur to me.
What would you have liked to be?
Know many languages to be able to understand myself with everyone.
Languages are not my strong suit.
But I have defended myself.
One day, in Germany, Nacho Duato was asked why he was taking me on tour without knowing German.
And Nacho said: "Pilar is understood even without speaking."
I agree.
This pandemic has decimated his generation.
Beyond the virus, how do we treat the elderly?
Wrong. We don't love them.
Not really.
Before, as a wife, they didn't give me a loan without my husband's permission, and now they don't give it to me because I'm 85 years old.
Even if I tell them that I put my house as collateral.
They tell you no, that you are not interested.
The elderly are not interesting because others do not know the amount of experiences, wisdom and love that they can convey, because they have lived it.
We are a generation of pleasing everyone.
But now it's uncomfortable.
And the older woman makes the most uncomfortable.
And it seems to me that women, at any age, have courage, perseverance, work capacity, whatever it is, and a tenderness that men do not just have.
Do you have anything left to do?
Learn to die.
I have many years and that is an art.
You are getting old, hindering yourself, but that does not mean you have to destroy those around you.
At my age, I would like to learn how to die.
I'm already doing some homework, but I'm in no rush to die, for everything else, yes, but for that, no.
Life is the only thing we have.
PIONEER TO THE FORCE
Pilar de Yzaguirre (Barcelona, 85 years old) was, eye to the fact, deputy general director of the Feminine Condition with José Manuel García Margallo as general director and Adolfo Suárez as president.
He resigned when he felt like a vase without autonomy or budget to do things and began to do them on his own.
Activist for women's rights by way of fait accompli, she was on the founding team of the first family planning center in Spain, in Vallecas, and brought Betty Friedman to give a lecture at the Juan March Foundation, but her meeting with the theater of the hand of José Luis Gómez in the National Dramatic Center changed his life.
Historical director of the Madrid Autumn Festival, her last great success was the assembly of 'Incendios', with Nuria Espert.
Now she premieres 'El grito', a play based on a real event, produced and sponsored by her, at the Fernán Gómez theater in Madrid.
His "penultimate" function.
For now
