Alicia Sáinz de la Maza

La Bola de Cristal was a Spanish TV Show that aired on TVE from 1984 to 1988. The show was the brainchild of Spanish writer Dolores Rico Oliver and was hosted by pop singer Alaska. The show, which was ostensibly targeted at a young audience, reflected the spirit of the times, that of the post-Franco Spanish transition and of the cultural and musical movement known as la movida. In contrast to previous shows, with a very childish use of language, it had continuous puns related to electronics: the Electroduendes puppets included Maese Cámara, Hada Vídeo and Bruja Avería as regular characters.

The story revolves around Goya's womanising and the mysterious death of the Duchess of Alba at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th Centuries, at a time when Madrid was wobbling through a difficult time and setting the scene for the following Prim vs Crown uprising.

In 1939, in a French prison camp, José Garcés of the defeated Spanish Republican army raises the spirits of his fellow prisoners by telling the story of the year he was 8 years old, 1911, in a small town in northeastern Spain. He was a rascal, baffling his father, always in trouble, and in love with Valentina, a neighbor girl. On his roof top at night he sends semaphore messages to her. He writes poems. He gets them into trouble, killing her father's breeding pigeons. When the two families camp at a decaying castle, his tutor, a sympathetic priest, tells him about the most valiant men, the saints, the heroes, and the poets. Already a poet, he learns a lesson about being a hero.

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