Isabel Pantoja: the only one capable of keeping the tragedy and the myth alive

On April 30, 1983, Seville took to the streets. In the church of Nuestro Padre Jesús del Gran Poder, María Isabel Pantoja Martín, radiant in her seven-meter satin train dress, became the wife of Francisco Rivera ‘Paquirri’. She was the fashionable tonadillera and he, a bullfighter on the podium and recently divorced from Carmen Ordóñez. The crowd, devoted and uncontrollable, stepped on her bridal train causing the very artistic bride to faint on the way to the ceremony. Many years later, another fainting episode would occur as she left the Málaga Court for very different reasons. That was one of those weddings that paralyze Spain but also the prologue to a tragedy that would forever mark the artist.

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Nine months later Francisco ‘Kiko’ Rivera was born, the only child of the marriage who has no memory of his father: on September 26, 1984, Paquirri died after a fatal goring in Pozoblanco. Isabel, 28 years old and a baby in her arms, became the widow of Spain. After mourning for a year, Pantoja returned like a hurricane of pain and memories, of broken dreams and torn flesh, with the album Sailor of Lights. The tragedy, far from extinguishing her, boosted her career and she became an essential figure filling theaters with a mix of copla, folklore, and melodrama as only she knew and has known how to manage.

Faithful to the memory of the bullfighter, until businessman Diego Gómez crossed her path, we only knew two special friendships, the broadcaster Encarna Sánchez and her fellow professional María del Monte. It was during her closeness to the singer that Isabel traveled to Peru to adopt her daughter, then Chabelita, later Isa. She wanted to be a mother again and there was no man up to the task. Thirty years later, she is not seen with the girl nor does she speak with María del Monte, Charo Reina, Justo Molinero, José Manuel Parada, Miguel Poveda, Falete, Graciela Otondo, Raquel Bollo, Las Mellis, Dulce, Diego Gómez… Isabel is the Spanish celebrity with the most ex-friends on the sidelines.

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If her surname had been Targaryen instead of Pantoja, she would have been a legendary dragon rider in her own A Song of Ice and Fire: her life is an epic of rises and falls. In the early 2000s, she began a relationship with Julián Muñoz, mayor of Marbella, which dragged her into the Malaya case, the corruption scandal that shook the Costa del Sol. The Justice system determined that the singer acted as a front for irregular money and sentenced her to two years and one day in prison for money laundering. On November 21, 2014, she entered the Alcalá de Guadaíra prison in Seville, wearing dark glasses and walking with great dignity. When she was released from prison, she added to her title of Widow that of Survivor (both capitalized), both because the tribute album to her friend Juan Gabriel brought her back to the stage and because her debts with the Treasury forced her to participate in the reality show of the same name to generate income.

In her struggle with the tax authorities, Isabel lost all her assets and secretly re-mortgaging Cantora caused her son to distance himself from her for six years. She has grandchildren with whom she does not have a relationship. Finally, mother and son reconciled this past March, shortly before Isabel embarked on a tour of Latin America and the U.S. Kiko once again became her emotional support and even occasional stage partner. Like before. Isabel celebrates today 70 years of art, mourning, ego, and scandal.

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