25 Chomin, the boy from Burgos who played the harmonica in El Bueno, el Feo y el Malo, 60 years later

The participation of Chomin, a priest and native of Salas de los Infantes, who plays the harmonica boy in the film 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly', has gone viral, after the report of Calleja for the Demand

Burgos.conecta

Julio César Rico

July 13, 2025

[Domingo Contreras plays the harmonica as he did 60 years ago in the film.]

 Domingo Contreras, Chomin, as he is known by his friends and parishioners, is a retired priest. He is going to be 80 years old. For a few years he has been celebrating mass in his town, in Salas de los Infantes, in the province of Burgos, and he still picks up the harmonica to remember that year in which he was, for a few seconds, a star of celluloid.

But beyond that vocation and his service as a priest, Chomin boarded Calleja's helicopter to tour and chat with the communicator about his experience in filming the scene of the famous western 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. There he played his harmonica in the cemetery of the film. The talk about that scene with Calleja has gone viral.

Chomin's smile

Chomin wears a smile that does not age, on the contrary, it is perennial, it encourages and encourages us to work for others, to "make the kingdom" and reality that "the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor are evangelized", from the Gospel. On July 4, he celebrated 55 years as a priest.

He has spent part of his life as a missionary in the middle of the Amazon Jungle and in villages in Peru. Life has struggled with him in his mission and in the service to those who most need the close presence of someone who encourages and supports. Even in his retirement, he is one of the volunteers who cooperates with the joint work of pastoral volunteers with prisoners. At full capacity.

Chomin's smile lights up when someone asks him about the film. And it unravels into thousands of anecdotes. We would need hundreds of pages to write the events of that time. They have their importance, because they are the experience of a time that, fortunately or unfortunately, will not return.

The artistic and musical vein

Chomin was born in Salas de los Infantes in the midst of the Spanish depression after the Civil War. And even more so in a village. He was the youngest of five children, all boys. The artistic and musical vein comes from his father who, beyond his ordinary job, played the organ at religious celebrations and was the director of the famous Salas Music Band.

He wanted to play the piano, but he settled for the harmonica. And that led him to be one of the protagonists of a small scene in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. The film had been reviled by a misunderstood conception of the Hispanic 'Spaghetti Western'. When a group of madmen set out to dig up the cemetery where Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef starred in a duel to the death, it was resurrected.

Anecdotes

I remember Chomin telling his anecdotes on a terrace with a beer in Burgos. He remembered that he was 19 years old when “the cinema” arrived in Salas and the entire region. The small villages, which succumbed in muddy streets to the heat of the old school, the church and the Civil Guard barracks, “revived, our lives changed”.

One of his brothers commented that “the movie theater guys were looking for people who played an instrument.” That summer, Chomin, on vacation in his neighborhood of San Andrés de Salas, saw the claim; and they caught him. They discarded one who “played the drum” and the chosen one was Chomin.

When Chomin Contreras starts to tell things about that moment, a beer falls short on that terrace of the Espolón. Memory is present. Chomin says that there were “many extras”; and they were paid “like professionals”. The production company had set 300 pesetas. “Today we have no idea, but 300 pellas were a lot,” he confesses.

In the village they knew that the film was a blockbuster and they put courage into it to try to “charge more” because “if we played in a nightclub we were going to earn 2,000 pesetas”. They took twice as much as they were going to give them.

By helicopter

Calleja's now famous helicopter was waiting for a place for Chomin, who reeled off anecdotes and gossip from the film with the host of the program. All seeing the privileged environments such as the Natural Park of the Glacial Lagoons of Neila or the Sabinares del Arlanza-La Yecla. The recording was made in May and involved the work of a team of more than 20 people, four cameras, drones and two helicopters. The Burgos Provincial Council, through the Society for the Development of Burgos (Sodebur) made it possible to make the report a reality.