Penélope Cruz and Blanca Portillo, a path full of meetings until the Goya Awards 2022

The first time that Penélope Cruz and Blanca Portillo met was in the Yeserías prison.

They were not imprisoned, nor did they visit any imprisoned relative: it was their first joint work,

, by Azucena Rodriguez.

The year was 1994 and Rodríguez, who had spent time in prison for his opposition to Francoism in the last years of the regime, decided to portray his own story, but far from wallowing in suffering, he filled his film with tenderness and humor .

In the first sequence that both share, the recently arrived Lucía (Cruz) contemplates the entry of Manuela (Portillo) like a hurricane into the prison dining room.

Manuela climbs on top of the table where the rest of the inmates are eating, she rips open the red dress that she is wearing and shows her companions her completely naked body.

Lucía looks at her in surprise until Manuela explains: she is going to marry a prisoner from Carabanchel that very day and has arranged her dress so that she can pull it off at the

“I'm going to get laid for each one of you.

Sixteen?".

“No, seventeen”, corrects one of them in reference to Lucía.

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Entre Rojas

was also the debut of Blanca Portillo (Madrid, 58 years old) in the cinema, although she was far from being a novice in acting.

She had been living on theater for a decade, where she premiered in a

directed by José Luis Gómez.

At 20 years old, the actress had a formal boyfriend and plans to get married, but on her return from the tour the only commitment she wanted to assume was with the theater.

was followed by

The

,

... The collection of theatrical classics that he chained together showed that the scene knew how to reward his dedication.

Despite her youth, Penélope Cruz (Alcobendas, 47 years old) was not new to the trade either.

She received her first professional opportunity in 1988, when she was chosen by Nacho Cano to star in the music video for

.

Shortly after, she took another test that, in her own words, changed her life: "I don't really know what I was doing reading

at 14, but when it came to my ears that there would be a

open, I showed up there”, he said in a farewell letter to Bigas Luna after his death.

“The first thing Bigas asked me was my age.

I told him I was 17 years old and he, always very sweetly and without making me feel bad, laughed in my face and said: 'Well, you won't be able to do this movie, although I'll call you for another one when you're older (...).

I got the big surprise almost three years later.

The phone rang and I received a call that made me believe in miracles.”

Thus he ended up starring in

.

And the miracles overlapped: his second film,

, by Trueba, received the second Oscar for best non-English speaking film for a Spanish film.

01:10

Trailer - Parallel Mothers

Penélope Cruz, in 'Parallel Mothers'.

After their work in

, their careers separated and did not coincide again until

(2006). Penelope took advantage of the 12 years that passed between both projects to become an international star thanks to her work in Hollywood, with that ability that some talents have to make their feats seem easy. He shouted that "Pedrooo" that certified that Almodóvar had won the Oscar for best non-English speaking film for

(the second film they worked on together after

) and for a moment the feat seemed simple.

Blanca, meanwhile, combined an increasingly solvent theatrical career as an actress, producer and director, with her television work.

Carlota, her character in

gave her the popularity that the theater denied her and her stage gave her the prestige that Spanish television was deprived of at the time.

"I have no problem playing the deep goose and the next day playing Medea," she assured years ago in an interview.

The reunion with 'Back'

Cruz gave Raimunda the best of herself, which is saying something, and Raimunda gave the interpreter, in addition to one of the best characters of her career, her first Oscar nomination —the first actually for a Spanish actress— , his second Goya and the Cannes award for best performance, shared with the entire female cast of the film.

From her experience in Cannes, Portillo usually remembers an anecdote about her: she could hardly sit at the table with her companions, because without the hair of one of her character, no one recognized her there.

It was the wife of Samuel L. Jackson who snapped at her waitress who did not want to accommodate her: “But she is Agustina!”

The same year Portillo premiered

directed by Milos Forman, and

, where he played Fray Emilio Bocanegra, a constant, that of interpreting men who, after having played Hamlet and Segismundo —or right now Juan Mayorga in

, is already a house brand.

“I am passionate about the character, not his sex (…).

We have a different education and a different social role, which they have put into us with a hammer”, he explained to EL PAÍS, “but from my heart I don't think there are many differences”.

To the five Max awards that he has accumulated for his work in theater, we must add the Silver Shell that he won for

, the National Theater Award (2012) and the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (2018), that Cruz had received three years earlier.

02:10

Trailer for 'Maixabel'

Blanca Portillo, at a moment in 'Maixabel'.

A year after the nomination for

, Penélope won the Oscar for best supporting actress thanks to

and Portillo celebrated it in a forum that he wrote for EL PAÍS: “She has become one of the greats.

I always knew that she was, but tonight, seeing her with the statuette in her hand, I have the impression that, starting today, the whole world will know.”

They worked together again on Almodóvar's next film,

, and since then their careers have not crossed again.

This week the faces will be seen in the Goya.

Both are vying for the award for best leading actress, one for

a film for which Cruz has won the Volpi Cup at the Venice Film Festival

and the other for

.

Perhaps the Goya will be won by Petra Martínez, for

It would not matter: at this point neither of them has to prove anything to anyone.

The Oscar stage gave Penélope Cruz the opportunity to give the speech of her life: “I was born in a place called Alcobendas, where this was not a very realistic dream”.

“Now that the years have passed and I look back, never, not even in my wildest dreams, could I have imagined what has happened and where I have arrived,” Portillo confessed when he received the National Theater Award.

Segismundo, in his confinement, did not know how to distinguish dreams from life.

Blanca and Penélope met in a prison and seem to have managed not to distinguish life from dreams.

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