PERET, THE KING OF THE GYPSY RUMBA

From the corrals of Mataró to the stages of half the world, the artistic and personal adventure of Peret, the artist who with a little mambo, a splash of tanguillo and a pinch of rock created the Catalan rumba.

50 years after the success of Borriquito, the maestro’s grandchildren star in an intimate portrait of the Peret family, with Andreu Buenafuente as narrator.

The title leaves no room for misunderstanding: this is an intimate portrait and at the same time a tribute to Pere Pubill Calaf, Peret for the entire world, the king of Catalan rumba for history. With the complicity of his grandchildren and friends such as Petitet, Justo Molinero and even his favorite tailor from the Sant Antoni neighborhood, the documentary closely recounts Peret’s “movie life” based on home conversations and after-dinner conversations at the bar. , as well as a truckload of archival material and even fun dramatizations. From the corrals of Mataró (“where there were only rats and hunger”) to Cera street in Raval; of the younger years among prostitutes, card games and street selling at bowling for the tourists of Calella; from the invention of a new and lively gypsy rumba that drew on Pérez Prado and Elvis (very different from the flamenco rumba that the others did) to the ringing of the bell with “Borriquito” and the international tours with his faithful palmeros, Toni and Huesos ; from the forced performance in Eurovision to his long retirement to become an evangelical pastor and his resounding return with Los Amaya and Los Chipén. God, the family and the rumba is the triumvirate that presides over a film that does not shy away from explaining the bitterness with which Peret lived the absurd controversy over the paternity of the Catalan rumba with which some wanted to confront “El Pescadilla”. Nor describe a complex personality, the result of the tension between the gypsy world and the payo world, between poverty and wealth, between truth and picaresque.