Spanish Western actors [Part 1 “The Stars”]

 Diario 16 Mediterraneo

By Santiago Aparicio

8/18/2023

The European Western had its moment of greatest glory from the early 1960s to the early 1970s. The so-called spaghetti western had in Spain the best place for all those film productions that came to invent a new way of telling what Americans had been doing for years. In fact, the film genre, on this side of the Atlantic, has remained in the collective imagination much more linked to dust and bounty hunters than to the beautiful and enormous productions of people like John Ford. In fact, the genre in the US itself ended up copying the European western. Clint Eastwood mixed both forms, but Sam Peckinpah was closer.

These hundreds of productions, rather co-productions between Italians, Spaniards, Germans and/or French, had numerous Spanish and Italian actors both in the leading and secondary roles. Normally it was tried that the star of the film was an actor, if it was in low hours better for that of saving costs, American. This is how Eastwood arrived in Almería with Sergio Leone. That way came Lee van Cleef (who shot more films and even had a character, Sabata, iconic), Guy Madison or Craig Hill. Numerous European actors also took this leading role such as Gianni Garko (the unforgettable Sartana), Giuliano Gemma, Franco Nero, Terence Hill, Gian Maria Volonté... and some Spanish actors almost forgotten today.

Spanish actors who are icons of the western all over the world (although especially in Europe where films are still shown today) but are almost forgotten in Spain. Many of them died seven times a week in different films. Some did not get to have a line in some productions, but all of them are recognizable by their faces for all those people who like to watch cowboy movies. The luck that Spain has had, at least in the twentieth century, to have a great variety of secondary actors is perfectly reflected in the European western. If you watch, from time to time, any of the films in Leone's dollar trilogy, you will think that this or that one is American or Italian, but no, they are Spanish actors. Remember the actor who kills Van Cleef at the beginning of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"? Spanish. Antonio Casas. They will be talked about today, while remembering directors who left great films such as Alfonso Balcázar or Rafael Romero Marchent.

The protagonists

Undoubtedly the best known of the Spanish actors of the European western is Fernando Sancho. The Mexican of any movie that had a character of this type. On some occasions he was the villain of the film, in others the revolutionary general and in some more the sympathetic Mexican who accompanies, trying to deceive him in a mischievous way, the main protagonist. You cannot forget the character that was repeated in several productions, Carrancho. Dozens of films recorded between Almería (Tabernas desert), Colmenar Viejo, Hoyo de Manzanares or the Monegros desert. Not only Mexicans lived Sancho who acted in numerous films of another genre.

George Martin (Francisco Martínez Celeiro) is another of the great actors of the European western. Dozens of films, the most famous with starring role Clint the lonely and "The Return of Clint the Stranger", where he played all the roles of the genre. Good, bad, friend, enemy, rancher, ragged or bounty hunter. He also made incursions into the genre of superheroes, having a lot of success in Italy with films in the style of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill (in fact they shared actors to hit).

Ángel del Pozo is another of the best-known faces of the European western. More than thirty films behind him make him one of the greats of the genre. He had started his career, after kicking the theaters, in well-known films such as Margarita is called my love but he was captured for western films for his ability to play good, good and bad, very bad. With the passage of time, and some directed films, he left the cinema to move to television production and direction in Mediaset.

Believe it or not, or find it surprising, Jesús Puente was one of the pioneers of the European western. He made about a dozen films, although most were attempts to recreate Fordian films. Further away from the aesthetics of frontier and gunmen, although not of revenge Puente made sheriff or landowner on some occasions before he was recognized as the great theater actor he always was.

Eduardo Fajardo almost always played the bad protagonist of the movies. And a bad guy in the European western was almost a merciless, inhumane and ruthless protagonist. He is remembered for his roles in Django or El bandido Malpelo. Seasoned in the cinema before arriving in Almeria (where when shooting two films at the same time he made a mistake of shooting on occasion, as he told hilariously), he is more remembered among the general public for his characters of responsible father, military or head of this or that business. The reality is that he was one of the greats of the genre, embroidering the wicked.

In addition to these great actors there were some who made incursions, more or less stable, in the western as Luis Dávila or Conrado San Martín (impressive his villain in The Long Days of Revenge). He also combined the leading role with the secondary role Roberto Camardiel, a classic in the casts of the genre. Paco Rabal made some leading character. Although the one who best reconciled the roles of protagonist / secondary was Daniel Martín. As soon as he was a traitorous Union captain, as a ruthless villain than one of those who quickly fell into the first big firefight. And how can we forget another of the villains of Spanish cinema (in all kinds of genres he has played that role), José Manuel Martín. In the western he played mainly Mexican although Mariano Ozores allowed him to play bad only in one of the last films (a western in that way) that were made in Almería, Al Este del Oeste.

[To be continued]