Since she was a child, the actress Barbara Goenaga He has a scar on his forehead that is the product of fantasy: he got it while playing, after imagining a large in-ground pool. The year he was born, 1983, he had his first pancreas transplant in Spain and the national team beat Malta 12-1 in football, a sport that has never fascinated him. He is part of the generation that still exchanged music cassettes. He appeared in a television series at the age of three. He participated in a film at the age of nine. Between the ages of 11 and 15 he was in the cast of Goenkale —a successful soap opera from the Basque Country—. And her CV is a collection of interesting roles: she has been a lawyer in Love is foreverthe wife of a mayor in Oviedo Expressa cellist in The group and psychologist in Tell me how it happened.
Perhaps the only character with which he leaves acting aside is the one he shows on Instagram, a social network in which has accumulated almost 29,000 followers: «I like social media because it is a space where you can have your own voice»she analyzes. “When you have the flu, you can take an ibuprofen, an anti-flu medicine, something… right? PREGNANT WOMEN CAN’T. #wesleepwithonions #greatroomambiance #ieup. Ah! I took your shirt @bsemperthat I can’t fit in, you know,” she posted on December 21, 2015, under an entertaining video sequence. The name of her youngest son, Eliot, born this September, was confirmed in the same way: “Like the child in my favorite movie.” And she is spontaneous: “Love is many things. For example, that I read your scripts and don’t look up even in turbulence,” she commented under a photo inside an airplane three years ago.
The one who doesn’t look up in that photo is Borja Semperher partner, a politician who began his career at the age of 17 – inspired by Gregorio Ordóñez – and who is more than accustomed to turbulence: He was a PP councillor in Irún at a time when almost no one from his party dared to be one in some towns.and he was encouraged to publish a hard and very personal story – addressed to his parents and entitled Don’t let this moment be stolen from you– after the long-awaited announcement of the end of terrorism. The year he was born, 1976, was also a bit hectic: King Juan Carlos I approved a general amnesty for prisoners who had been imprisoned for their ideas, there was a theft of 119 paintings from Picasso’s late period and Fidel Castro stopped being prime minister to become Cuban president.
Sémper defines himself as a complex person, like that year 1976 that almost no one remembers anymore. “I think it’s okay to doubt and question myself and to have my political convictions shaken from time to time,” he says. Despite being on opposite sides of the fence, she defended Pedro Sánchez on Twitter when he was booed during the parade on October 12. She is a fan of Joaquín Sabina and admires the work of Luis García Montero, a communist poet, and the liberal-conservative Luis Alberto de Cuenca. She never goes out without a notebook where she jots down phrases for her speeches or poems. Before launching her first book, she would sometimes show some loose verses on social media and then delete them. And when she is calm, she usually reads in the bathroom.
Hermit Routine
His father-in-law, Juan Luis GoenagaHe is one of those who paint. He has long, grey hair, tied back in a braid, and a discreet earring in his left ear. He started drawing when he was a child: landscapes, cyclists. Perhaps because cyclists were part of the clientele of Aurrera, a bar in San Sebastian run by his parents, an emblematic place where some of the leading figures of Basque culture used to meet and where it is said that even the spy Mata Hari stayed. Juan Luis expresses in his works what he “sees”: he paints stones, he paints herbs, he paints roots, he paints beings linked to mythology. He also makes portraits and erotic drawings. He gives names to the animals he cares for: Mister is the cat, Mikela the donkey, Jaina the dog… and Antoñito and Jodorowsky were two capuchin monkeys he had and who have since died. But he is reluctant to think of titles for his paintings. He was born in 1950, the year in which it was published. Martian ChroniclesHe says he is a “hermit.” He never leaves home without a pencil and paints to draw his grandchildren. And he is not a social media user.
His refuge is in Alkiza (Gipuzkoa), a village on the slopes of Mount Ernio with less than 400 inhabitants where the smell of fields and fodder is present. It is a renovated 15th-century farmhouse with small windows and a skylight that lights up his workshop almost all day long. A place full of objects that seem to be alive, such as the frying pans where the painter mixes his colours, and antique furniture and books, dozens of them, even under the beams.
In search of silence
These corners that Juan Luis has also filled with canvases are also an oasis for the rest of the family. A necessary break for catharsis in the middle of agendas where there are hardly any empty lines. Barbara, for example, was a jury member at a film festival and had to get used to breastfeeding Eliot between films until the closing day. And Sémper gets up early to play sports, takes the children to school when he is not in a hurry, goes to the Basque Parliament or to his office, often has several meetings in one day and feels tied to the city and the noise.
In the farmhouse, on the other hand, she says that sometimes she finds almost absolute silence. “Here even the children adapt, they slow down and have a lot of fun,” she says. Eliot sleeps soundly in a basket that is placed in a room with a heater when it is cold; and Telmo, his older brother, has fun with the same toys that his mother and uncle used to play with two decades ago. Mister, the cat, usually keeps an eye on the kitchen to steal food; and the donkey has even learned to open a door and from time to time makes a pretense of invading the house with the chickens behind, in single file. Barbara, who has just arrived with the whole troop in a personalized car –with a white door that has her signature on display–, remembers that when she was a child she would sometimes take her bike and think about flying, “like in the movie ET“, or she would climb a log convinced that she would land on Mars. He says his life is like “an action comedy”who enjoys acting, who feels very involved with raising her children and who has also launched a line of jewelry, Soulbask, with which she helps organizations such as the Vicente Ferrer and Aladina foundations or the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid.
In the mountains and roads that surround us, according to Juan Luis, It is possible to “read” the history of the world because there are everything from fossils to cave paintings. And inside the farmhouse there are also traces, but from a more intimate past: a washbasin, a Singer sewing machine, closed chests as if they were time capsules, teapots… and black and white photos where one can glimpse some very present absences.
