A Boldface Name of Cuba’s Performing Arts: Adolfo Llauradó

The Excelencias Group proposes you to take a closer look at Santiago-born Adolfo Llauradó Salmerón, who became famous due to his fabulous dramatic qualities as an actor.

“The truth is that there’s nothing else I can do, and that’s bad. If I’m going to hammer a nail, I hit my finger; I cannot do anything, I do it wrong. It’s not like I don’t want to, but I don’t pay much attention to those things, I’m all about performing and that’s the only thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Adolfo Llauradó confessed and he wasn’t mistaken since his regular presence on movies, radio, theater and television, with matchless quality, positioned this actor as one of the most emblematic faces of Cuba’s stage.

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Llauradó worked for CMKC radio station as one of its actors. He later tried his luck at the Cuban capital city and performed side by side with such outstanding figures of movies and television as Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez and Daysi Granado.

Many people recall Adolfo Llauradó’s face from the 1960 decade with the first productions of the incipient Cuban Institute of Art and Movie Industry (ICAIC is the Spanish acronym).

Adolfo Llauradó played the leading role in remarkable movies “Lucía” and “Retrato de Teresa”, which made him be the number one choice for other works not only in the movies and television, but in the theater, where he performed in first-line works. His role in the classic “Santa Camila de La Habana Vieja” will always be remembered.

This actor was also in “Manuela y Cecilia”, “El Hombre de Maisinicú” and “Las Profecías de Amanda”, as well as co-productions with Spain, Peru and Venezuela.

Beyond performing, teaching was another aspect in Llauradó’s life since 1941. He collaborated with students and producers graduated at the International Movie and TV School, San Antonio de los Baños. In 1998 he created "La Terraza" Performing Workshop at his house, in order to train children and teenagers to pass aptitude tests and enter art schools.

Llauradó participated in International Movie Festivals in Spain, Moscow, France, Brazil and International Theater Festivals in Havana, Camagüey, Spain and Yugoslavia, among others.

Adolfo Llauradó passed away at the age of 60, in a fruitful creative stage as he has already directed two documentaries "Las Divas" and "Esmeralda". The last one had been awarded during the past UNEAC’s Caracol Festival and Llauradó was set to star a film by Pastor Vega, "Resurrección".

On this versatile actor, Uruguayan critic Jorge Rufinelli said: “Who doesn’t remember him in the third episode of Lucía, directed by Humberto Solás in 1968, keeping a jealous eye on the illiterate peasant, his wife, while the literacy teacher was trying to teach her the very first letters; or the memorable Retrato de Teresa, by Pastor Vega, 1979, as Ramón, a husband that was as unfaithful and sexist as vulnerable? (…) Beyond the cruel slave hunters he ever played on the screen, Adolfo Llauradó built up an image of passionate, jealous and domineering man, with human features, not cliché, an image many people described as a trace of the pre-revolutionary period, while other people thought it was a permanent element in the Caribbean idiosyncrasy.”