A mini-museum by Tato Bores traveled to Madrid in the midst of Oscar Martínez's move to Spain
.
Bow, tailcoat, cufflinks, silk scarf
with which Bores is resurrected every time Oscar parades them in his honor in special circumstances such as the Venice Festival.
Three years ago, having made the decision to stay where his intense work was, Oscar had put up for sale the apartment in Recoleta that was his home for 15 years. He then began the process of saying goodbye to several objects that accompanied him throughout his life. It was
not
easy to decide what to give, what to offer in the market, what to turn into trash. Treasures like his lower grade notebook with his first handwriting were part of a limbo.
Classification, selection, duel. If moving is equivalent to a small death and a rebirth, moving from one continent to another after 70 left Martínez in a visceral state
. The highest point of the Richter scale has passed and this Spanish citizen, already installed in front of the charming Plaza del Marqués, in the Salamanca neighborhood of Madrid, is all calm and diplomacy.
Tato's aura also flies over those coordinates. The family stories of Marina Borensztein, Tato's daughter whom Oscar married 12 years ago, accompany from the other side of the ocean. Also the editorials of her brother-in-law Alejandro Borensztein in
Clarín
, which she reads every Sunday.
It is not strange that your cell phone rings and the call is from "Cholo" Diego Simeone with an invitation to a barbecue or to his box at the Cívitas Metropolitan Stadium
. The brand new friendship between the Atlético coach and the actor includes endless after-dinner conversations in which topics from series and theater are mixed with blackboard technicalities, secrets of "squad, top scorers, goalkeepers" and other native football delights.
The first thing he gained by emigrating, he says, is "the loss of alertness
," walking through the city with the phone in sight without expecting the assault. "Argentina is a ship that has a damaged hull and water is entering from all sides. On top of that ship there is a pitched battle," she considers.
"The social fabric is very damaged and any political leader should not add tension or violence
," he says.
He does not pronounce the words "Milei", nor "Kirchnerism" nor does he want to make his speech a headline focused on politics
. He is sitting in the offices of Disney Argentina, where he promotes
Bellas Artes
, the series he stars in on Star+ under strict press protocol: two employees witness the interview and write down each question we ask.
The man who wrote Ella in my head
,
Counted days
and
Pure fiction
accounts for half a dozen moves
and is part of the Argentine Academy of Letters.
At 74 he has a Master's degree in freight contracting, packaging, and movement, but he is taking his first courses in immigration.
"Part of the well-being I felt when I went to Spain was the social spirit, the relaxed people, the fact that they didn't talk about politics all the time. A big contrast," he illustrates hours after being applauded at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, in the presentation of the production directed by Gastón Duprat and Mariano Cohn.
Marvel at his sophisticated and cocky character -Antonio Dumas-, art historian and cultural manager who is appointed director of the Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid.
-Do you have a feeling of relief, of being "protected" when you read what is happening on this side?
--Yeah. And it makes me very sad, I am very sorry that the decline is so pronounced and I am worried about the hostility, the savage confrontation, the fragmentation, both on one side and the other. Apparently we are installed in that bellicose culture. It is very harmful.
-What accumulation of things were wearing down your relationship with Argentina?
-We have reached 60% poverty, before it was one digit and did not include destitution and marginality. There was upward mobility, a world-class public school, equal public health. Until almost the year 70, that is, yesterday in historical terms, Argentina was among the five countries with the best per capita income. The redistribution of wealth was another, there was an extensive middle class. This has been progressive. Alfonsín assumes and even after the horrific experience of the dictatorship, there were 5% poor. And you can't blame anyone for that. The political class is not in charge, but everyone has been part of it in some way. With the pressing problems we have, confrontation leads us to destruction... We cannot continue without an agreement on vital issues: distribution of wealth, health, education, housing.
-Did you think about trying to change this from within, from participation in politics?
-There was a time when they came looking for me. You can not imagine how much. When she did
The Man
(1999), she played the president. A very first person came to tempt me with that and the truth is that he made me tremble, but I immediately rejected him.
-Because?
-It was a very strong proposal. There are certain rules of the game that are not for me, it is a messianic temptation to believe that you are going to be able to change something, but no... if there is not a collective, a generation that says "we are going to change things", it doesn't happen.
-To do what and who tempted you?
-I'm never going to say it. But it was shocking.
-Did you leave the country hurt? Having expressed your thoughts also generated a lot of fierce criticism...
-It generated everything. A great adhesion and, of course, the opposite in the fans. But I never spoke disrespectfully to anyone. I was always very careful, moderate in that sense, because I want to live in a plural country where everyone can say what they want and that has no cost.
-Among the actors there is great harshness and in some cases a culture of cancellation when saying what you think. Francella's words a few days ago, for example...
-We have to end that. Not good. I read the statements and if they are what I read, you can disagree or not, but they did not seem violent or disrespectful to anyone. She expressed her confidence. I understand that what many people are suffering is painful. She may disagree with Guillermo, but she has every right in the world to say so. He was not disrespectful or tributary of what he said. Go out and kill him because he expressed his point of view? That trench thing that was installed hurts us a lot.
-Should something happen in the country for you to return?
-Never say never, but it is true that I am already grown. I made the decision to leave at 70. I'm 74, I can't imagine making such a big move again. I don't even have a house in Argentina anymore. But I can come back often and work.
Prehistory of a goodbye
He was filming with Antonio Banderas and Penélope Cruz in Spain when the pandemic stopped filming of the film
Official Competition
, by directors Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat. In an apocalyptic climate, in March 2020, Oscar
took the last Iberia flight before the Barajas airport was closed and returned bewildered.
"I was locked in my house for six months praying that the project, which had reached cruising speed and could fail, would be resumed. In September 2020 we resumed and until then my idea was not to stay and live in Spain, but to spend the holidays in Argentina and spend the holidays in Uruguay, as always," he says.
By March 2021, the pandemic found its most dramatic point and the actor's idea of settling in the old continent began to take shape in Buenos Aires.
On September 16, 2021, they notified him of the good news: the granting of Spanish nationality.
"I had hard work ahead of me in Spain and the Spanish passport allowed me to have a very different relationship with income there, my contracts changed and I thought: 'The time has come'. I made a power of attorney to my sister, I left the house for sale and I left".
His partner, Marina, had the most painful and exhausting job, disarmament.
"From Argentina he called me in an altered emotional state 14 times a day. '
And what do I do with this?',
he asked me. Just to give you an idea, we had a dining table for 12 people and you had to be a multimillionaire to move it. the furniture.
-Are you detached with material things, how was that bond with things, is it easy for you to separate yourself from objects?
-When the time came to do it, I was detached. It was a process of years. In the cost/benefit equation the benefit was greater. We lived in a very nice house where we had spent many wonderful moments. But I had had two divorces! He was very trained.
-Did you keep anything from your childhood?
-For example: my mother had saved all my first grade notebooks, which at that time was called “lower first grade.” And I gave it to my oldest daughter. Of other things that I had to get rid of: the press of 50 years of career. There were boxes and boxes. One day my oldest daughter went to see thing by thing and she selected what she thought was best.
-And the prizes?
-I did take all the prizes. I don't have them displayed at home, only the international ones. I have the rest in four plastic trunks.
-Before your relationship with Marina, what was your relationship with Tato like?
-Very pretty. I ran for 35 years and I would meet him in Palermo, he would walk and we would chat. Once, at a time when his program had a silent toast at the end that included Serrat, Piazzolla, and Menotti, he called me as a guest. He didn't make you call because of the production, he called you with that unique voice. Everything I did in theater, Berta, his wife, saw it. In fact, Berta and Tato were invited to my previous wedding. I remember that I was making
The Last of the Ardent Lovers
(1987) with impressive success, head of the company and partner of the producer, and it started to go well. And Tato went to see the show and every time I ran into him he told me: "
Take care of the money, baby!"
Marina jokes that Tato already knew what was going to happen between us later and that's why he asked me to I would take care of the money.
Mauricio Borensztein, "the nation's comic actor", as Tato himself defined himself, was magically part of the life of Martínez and Marina's crush.
Legend has it that it was in the small square that bears the name of Tato Bores, in the Tres de Febrero park, in front of a tree planted in his honor, that they crossed paths without expecting it.
A quasi-epistolary exchange by email designed the rest of the romance.
In 2011 they got married.
Partner of Antonio Banderas
He is proud of this new audiovisual “son” Martínez, who is praised for the right tone of his interpretation in the series that will have a second season. His curmudgeonly Dumas, an absent father who lives with a cat, hates inclusive language and does not hide his ideology, “takes the last silver bullet to confront regulations or what is politically correct today.”
“I don't boast about everything I've done, not everything was complete once I did it, but this is a fine, delicate, extremely intelligent humor, with that corrosive and desacralizing look of Cohn-Duprat
,” he praises. “They achieved an extraordinary achievement, something for all audiences, but elevated at the same time.”
Two years ago, one day in April, Oscar began to write a play that ended up fascinating Antonio Banderas.
For more than a month, he dedicated himself to shaping
Soy tuya,
a dramatic comedy that the Spaniard plans to produce in 2025 in Madrid. The direction will be carried out by Martínez, who could play one of the three characters. The idea is to also summon a Spanish actress and an Argentine actor.
"When I told Antonio the idea, he went crazy.
He put us up at his house, we went to see him at the theater, and on the last day of my stay I read the material to him.
He was originally going to direct the project, but he has an impossible schedule, not just as an actor."
From that little boy who debuted on monosyllabic TV, with barely a "no" in Res judicata, to this king of the "yes" who even hypnotized the Italians at the Venice Festival in 2016 with The Illustrious Citizen, there were kilometers well capitalized. "
I think about all those various things that we are throughout a life... I built myself up in 50 years of career, with three marriages, four daughters, three grandchildren. I feel that I enriched myself at a learning level
," he deduces.
"You know? Some colleagues tell me that when I was young I already said that I wanted to live in Europe. I don't remember having verbalized it reliably, but it seems that somewhere in the closet there was that."
-It seems that there is something that you don't have as an Argentine and that is nostalgia, that typical tango gene that sometimes doesn't let you move forward...
-It's true. I am strange, yes, that country that was, but I am not nostalgic. With nostalgia, life becomes unbearable because what comes next is old age and death. If you are nostalgic, the passage of time is shocking and I live longing for a time and looking forward. I think what happened to me is much bigger than I imagined as a child. I like to think that I didn't do the best. I don't know what is best, but I haven't gotten there yet.