With her second husband, the actor and musician Guillermo Antón, she has done much better. What would she say that she owes him?
In my life there are two Helens. The second Helena owes him a great personal and musical evolution, because he is a very special being. We were predestined to meet. He’s a great poet and a great writer, and as a singer I think he’s one of the best voices we’ve ever had. I have also learned of his inner war, of his way of fighting and of seeing life socially, morally and spiritually. That second Helena embarked there and has to be very grateful for his knowledge, because Guillermo has planted very important things in me.
As a singer, for example, I dared to break with certain schemes within my
way of interpreting although without losing my personality.
In 2003, Telecinco gave her the chance to be discovered by generations who were unaware of her repertoire. Why did that experience leave a certain bittersweet taste in you?
Because I didn’t see it completely clear either. It made me very sad, and it is something that I commented to Jesus Vazquez Every time we went to publicity, we didn’t all have the same treatment. I live singing it was not a white program as we had all requested. There were seven of the contestants who threw entire programs with hardly any intervention. In addition, in our contract there was a clause that said that during the duration of the program no one
We were not allowed to do promotion or interviews with any media. That was true for nine of us, but not for all ten. It is something that disappointed me a lot and that hurt us all, although I was the only one who said it. As I am very impetuous, I immediately show and show what others are commenting on or telling me behind the scenes.
He was also disappointed when, following winning The Senior Voice in 2019, the album he recorded barely received media attention…
It did not get media attention because it was not intended for it to have it. A label like Universal gets what it wants. It was a long time between when I won The Senior Voice and the moment in which they contacted me to start the song, which was the prize of the contest. You notice when there is a positive reaction or when they want you for something new and different, but that months-long silence no longer seemed normal to me. We all choose a theme. I’m going out to the street, with which I sought to break with the scheme that older singers have to disappear. The singers of the sixties and seventies who are still alive and still have their faculties have to be there and they can continue living on those faculties. I loved the theme because I saw that it was current and that with it I might claim that we are still alive and strong. What you can’t do is come and tell me that the style of that song doesn’t fit the channels or the radio formula when there are lots of them. No, sorry, or you don’t manage it well or you don’t
interested or you really should have chosen another topic, taking into account that you understand more regarding the market than I do. Instead of showing that, in the middle of 2020, there was a renewed value for people our age, so that an entire generation might smile and think that they are still alive, they parked us once more. In addition, they might have taken advantage of a song that came out in the middle of the pandemic, at a brutal moment for the issue of gender violence and the LGTBI collective, and that it was a well-rounded topic. In other countries they adore their figures and the people who come here don’t understand it either. But they’re not going to get me back into a hole. I can leave with a clear conscience because although I am no longer number one in my day, I was. I have bet very hard, I have been tremendously ruined and I have closed many paths for speaking with authentic sincerity that other of my colleagues have not had.
She says that she is a “master at digesting lies and forgetting pain.” Would she say that she has been worth all the effort?
Yes of course. Lies have to be faced, they have to be known and they have to be digested. I think that everyone has that point of intuition that allows them to know the lie, but we are educated to be diplomatic and smile. If you don’t digest the lie, you end up becoming like them, and that’s something you can’t afford as a human being. As for pain, you have to analyze it and you have to try to make it have a metamorphosis the day you suffer it. It has been difficult for me to clean them, although it is something I do every night. What I have not been able to clean up are the enormous humiliations to which I have been subjected professionally. These humiliations are motivated by envy and malice, and that is something that does scare me.