Telenovela Alborada, #10

First: I have to start assuming you know who these people are.

Second: If you are new to Alborada, please visit my recaps in ORDER - see the bottom of this post for information.

Third: THANKS to the people who are writing to me, and helping with various questions, and cheering me on. This project is time-consuming! But worth it!

Here is a comment from last night:

I'd just like to say Congratulations to the wimpy Asunción for finally standing up to someone! And not just someone but the ever so annoying Ada who had to go and have a hissy fit and spill the frijoles to Hipolita!!! And also Congratulations to Diego for being the crying, throwing tantrum baby that Rafael should be!!!

And an answer to my question about "de medio pelo" -

My mother-in-law said a "de medio pelo" is someone who is neither good or bad... someone unimportant... I did a search online and found the translation "mediocre"...

For those who have been asking the meaning of "Alborada" - it means "dawn" - it's a poetic word.

And finally, for those who have been asking how long the series will continue, from njmotmot:

Here's a news flash from the official Alborada website. The novela is being shown in Mexico and is about a month & half ahead of us. The final episode was scheduled to air there on Feb. 10 but the finale has been extended another two weeks that they are going to achieve not by changing the plot but by extending the scenes of what they've already filmed. In other words, they are going to pad the episodes with material that otherwise would have ended up on the cutting room floor. More recapitulations and reactions I assume. I confess though that I go to the web site to see what is going to happen in the novela. I alway peek at the end of books too. I don't like to be surprised.

OK, now on to the recap.

Wednesday: Isabel steams around telling people Diego's running her off the estate. She's not worried, just mad: "I have enough money to buy a palace!"

Doña Juana, mortified, insists to Diego that he let Isabel stay. "No, she offended me! And over some stupid girl I took to bed!" He whines and screams, again and again, "I DON'T WANT TO!!!" and throws and breaks lots of things.

Juana goes to Isabel's room and says she can stay; Isabel says, "only if he apologizes in person." Juana says, "You know he won't do that, and we don't need all the mouths yakking about us right now." Isabel cheerfully says, "Forget it, I'm out of here." She tells Marina: "He'll end up on his knees, begging my pardon."

Handsome dimwitted Andrés, in civvies, shows up at Cristobal's (Palacio de Lara) where Andrés's family (the brutal Francisco, the wimpy Asunción, and Catalina, lately sprung from the convent) has been living since Diego threw them off "Las Tunas." They're eating dinner. Andrés tells them he's been fired by Gasco. His mom snivels, "this will upset Doña Juana," and his father barks: "You'll go back there tomorrow and demand your job back." Andrés says no, he'll find other work. His father insists. Andrés leaves. There is muttering about his love for Marina and about Catalina's getting married to Cristobal. "I don't want to marry a man who doesn't love me." Asunción: "Nonsense - I did!"

On the road, night-time, torches burning ... Felipe, leaning against his son Martin's coffin and twirling a crucifix, swears vengeance against the beach people - including Victoria the Pirate Queen.

Leaning against a tree in the dark, Luis tells Hipólita: "There's something I have to tell you that you're not going to like." What a dolt he is! She gets all upset and asks: "Is it something about Rafael?" "Well, partially." "TELL ME NOW!" [TELL HER NOW, IDIOT -- ed.] "No, it's not the right time." Coward. As I used to remind my toddlers constantly, "It's GOOD to tell!"

That same night: Gasco finds Ramon and the mute in their favorite booze-hole. He asks who hired them to steal Hipólita, they tell him it was Perla and who cares anyway, he tells them "this wasn't just one of Luis's casual lovers, she's the mother of his son." Uh-oh.

We cut to Esperanza barfing in the woods. "It must be the bamboleo (wobbling) of the carriage." [A great new word for my vocabulary -- ed.] Soon, all are embroiled in a traffic jam caused by the meeting of (1) Esperanza with her brother Santiago and entourage, heading back to Guevara's estate, and (2) the wagon - carriage - horse procession carrying Martin's coffin home.

Hipólita's first view of Esperanza, and vice versa. In unison: "Who Is That Woman?"

Martin in his coffin is taken home to his mother. She screams NOOOOO! and also the first words I ever learned in Spanish, because I learned Spanish watching telenovelas: "NO PUEDE SER!" (It Can't Be!!)

Luis takes Hipólita to Cristóbal's and leaves. Hipolita rushes inside; there is a swift hug-fest with mom, sister, and maid. Then she wants Rafael. She's horrified to hear Doña Juana took him to the castle. The overwrought maid (Ada) who's been sobbing and screaming ever since she saw Hipólita get kidnapped, sobs and screams tactlessly: "That awful Don Luis tricked you! He is the man who boinked you in Santa Rita! He is the father of your child! This has all been a giant trick to steal Rafael!"

Hipólita: TILT TILT TILT. TILT!! After collapsing briefly she steams over to the Guevara estate, steams past all the guards, snatches Rafael (still completely calm) from Juana, and starts screaming about all the lies.

Luis comes up behind her in an uh-oh moment as she is cursing them all. He tries to calm her but she hisses, "Rather than leave Rafael with you, I'll kill you. It was all lies! EVERYBODY knew but me!!!!"

Esperanza sees all this and later confronts Luis. "Is she one of your lovers? I have a right to know!" "Yes, you have a right to know. She isn't one of my lovers - she's the woman I love, and that boy is my son."

Then a lot of screen time is lavished on a guy in the plaza, wearing only a barrel, being pulled along by soldiers and pelted with produce by an angry crowd. Is this significant?

Walking through the plaza, Luis tells Cristóbal: "To Hipólita, I'm a beast." They see Diego, Antonio and Rodrigo sitting at a café. Diego hails them, insults them a bit, asks about the mine. After they leave, Antonio comments: "He wasn't as you described him; I thought he'd be more carefree." Rodrigo mentions his interest in Catalina; Diego boasts: "I am her father's feudal lord [sort of], I can get her for you."

Thursday: Many scenes of people reacting to Martin's death, and many of people telling Hipólita (a) she should at least listen to Don Luis or (b) yes, he is a wretch. Also many scenes of Hipólita crying and cursing Luis while saying she loves him.

Diego tells Doña Juana she can forget installing Rafael, Luis's son, as the next Count: it will never happen. Diego's then pleased to hear that Esperanza, Luis's wife, who has had sex with nobody but Diego in many years, is pregnant. He wants a varon (male heir). Everybody else, assuming Esperanza is inventing this pregnancy, rolls their eyes.

Esperanza's in quite a pickle. Luis, who hasn't had sex with her, will know this isn't his child. Diego slithers into her boudoir and suggests she tell everybody it's a miracle conception (like that of the Virgin Mary). Esperanza later mutters she can't say she was impregnated by the Holy Spirit...

Esperanza's brother Santiago has the worst hair in the series, there must be a whole tube of mousse in those greasy strands. He finds out - from Diego - that his sister is pregnant. Diego invites him out on the town but Santiago points out he is still in mourning - for his father Agustín, murdered as you may recall by Diego's own evil henchman Gasco. (Agustín was also the hysterical Esperanza's father, and ALSO Hipólita's father.)

Diego says "el muerto al pozo y el hombre al gozo" ("the dead to the hole and man to his pleasure") and promptly walks backwards and almost falls over a chair. Was that an oopsy and they just didn't want to waste film and run the scene again?

Aunt Isabel and the no-longer-innocent Marina, dressed in black on their way to Martin's wake, stop by to see Hipólita, but she won't receive them. Her mother scolds her for her arrogant attitude and for making enemies of everyone.

Victoria the Pirate Queen comes to see her mother, La Poderosa. She tells the dwarf: "That last woman y'all sent me caused problems and I thought it was better that we get out of there." She opens the curtains on her mother's bed. "Mother!" "Daughter!" "Mother!" "Daughter!" [My daughter and I rarely have interchanges of that nature. -- Ed.]

"Mom - I want to come back. It's been years now!" "It doesn't matter - that Santo Varon still lives and hasn't forgotten the death of his brother." "But we're hundreds of miles from the capitol!" "That doesn't matter, the Inquisition has a long arm, and all it takes is one person to recognize you." "I'll stay hidden." "You're not the type to stay hidden." "But I WANT to come back." "I'll send a note to Don Ignacio and we'll see what he says." I quote this to you because I don't think we're supposed to know what it means yet - except, remember, we saw that scene of La Poderosa as a young girl witnessing the burning of a Jewish family - and her face is burned, which is why I guess she stays in bed behind the curtain all day.

There's a nice private dinner at Diego's with a string quartet and a suckling pig. Antonio rolls his eyes at Diego's gauche boasting and later tells Rodrigo: "I don't like him - he's so sarcastic and spoiled." Diego promises to introduce Rodrigo to Catalina tomorrow.

Luis goes, at night, and bangs on Hipólita's door. He tells her he still intends to provide for Rafael, and to see him - she says "Rafael is mine exclusively." "No, this concerns all three of us. He's my son too. Don't even think about fleeing, I'll be watching." I swear, this guy has the worst way of dealing with things.

Adalgisa says to Hipólita: "Either we stay and you let him take care of us all, or we leave for Panama." Hipólita: "Yes! we could work!" Adalgisa: "Well, yes, I'm a servant, but what can you do? Wash dishes?" Hipólita: "Why not?" "With that face and those breasts? You'll be boinked in the corner by the first man who sees you."

Meanwhile, the brutal Francisco will not stop hammering away on his plan to siphon funds by marrying his daughter Catalina to Cristóbal. Even during Martin's wake and funeral he nags everybody he sees. He yells at Hipólita constantly, saying everything is her fault; that she should never have been born; that, because of her, Catalina's hopes of a good marriage are wrecked; that even her mother Asunción is sick of her.

Antonio, still trying to decide whether he wants to invest with Diego, meets with old moneyman Malaquias and says he's most interested in the vanilla plantation and wants to go see it. He then goes to see Juana, whom he realizes "holds the reins."

Juana has figured out that Antonio is Hipólita's husband; she and Modesta want him to take Hipólita back to Panama, leaving Rafael behind with them! She disingenuously queries: "Are you married?" "No." "Were you never married?" "Yes, I was." "So you're a widower?" "No." "Are you divorced?" "Yes."

Friday kicks off with Martin's funeral. The parade includes quite a few people in Indian garb with drums, rattles, conch shell trumpets, and feathers on their heads. Felipe and Carmela are escorted home. "This house will be a tomb without our son."

Cristóbal and Luis go to visit La Poderosa and ask for help finding the men "who killed an innocent man with the point of a sword." (Evidently this is very cowardly.) She just says, "these things happen." Leaving without answers, they muse that she seems to be an educated woman. "Why does she conceal her face? Is it deformed? Maybe she's hiding from something or someone." Cristóbal says he'll investigate.

Victoria looked much better as a Pirate Queen - now she has a hairdo like a fluffy ginger poodle and she bobbles in one of those low-cut dresses. Her mom, La Poderosa, narrates: "It surprised me how much he (Don Luis) looked like Carlos, the previous Count of Guevara. Carlos's wife Aurora and I were friends until JUANA interfered. Juana had an unhealthy affection for her own brother (Carlos, the previous Count) and imagined that he and I were lovers... after the fire in the chalana (?) in which Carlos and Aurora died, Juana denounced your grandparents (La Poderosa's parents) to the Inquisition for being Jews. I was between life and death with the burns." "Is she (Juana) alive?" "Yes, and that's why I don't want you in Cuencas. Juana threatened me - she said if I didn't 'disappear' she'd denounce me, too. She might know your name."

Nevertheless, Victoria is determined to stay; she says if she can't live at mom's house she'll find another place.

The plaza: Antonio and Luis cross paths, and Antonio says, "Diego has invited me to invest in his vanilla plantation but since you're a partner I want to talk to you about it first." They make an appointment for tomorrow noon.

As promised, Diego brings Rodrigo to meet Catalina; though Diego hasn't seen Catalina since she was ten years old, he acts like it's natural he's come to have tea and has brought a buddy. When Asuncion nervously mentions their misfortunes - caused of course BY Diego - Diego patronizingly says: "I'll find a way to help."

In the plaza after taking leave, Rodrigo says: "With that class of woman, you have to marry." Diego: "Nah, her dad's in ruin and for three centavos he'd sell you his own wife." Rodrigo: "Nevertheless, I wouldn't be comfortable..." Diego: "Well, if you don't, I will - I like the shape of her face." (Giggles.)

Cristóbal visits his sister, who runs the convent. She tells him Catalina likes him "that way" - and suggests: "You've left the order, you could have a family of your own." He says: "It's a little soon, I'm not sure of the direction of my life." Wimp. Then he goes to see Fray Alvaro (boss of the Inquisition) to make an appointment to discuss, once again, Luis's divorce. "Is Luis's wife Esperanza pregnant?" "No." [Ha.] Alvaro: "I'll speak with her."

The brutal and now also incredibly persistent Francisco gets excited when his wife Asunción tells him about Rodrigo's visit. "If he's rich, we like him. We need to find out who has more money, Rodrigo or Cristóbal."

Hipólita realizes this is the very Rodrigo who is best buddy of her husband Antonio. She starts making plans to run away.

Doña Juana yells at Diego for making vanilla plantation plans: "You can't do this without Luis's consent." "I didn't sign anything." "You gave your word." "Words blow on the wind." "The Count of Guevara always keeps his word!" "I'm not the Count of Guevara, I'm the son of his sister and a nobody." "Your father wasn't a nobody."

Francisco is back at the Guevara's AGAIN. He's back there nagging them several times a day. This time, Juana slams the door in his face, so he talks to Diego, who laughs at Francisco's assumption that Rodrigo was brought to tea to begin possible marriage discussions. Diego says the actual idea was more a cash for goods exchange - he thought Francisco, as a "gentleman in ruin," would be glad to get some money in return for his daughter Catalina's favors. Francisco leaves in a fury and gets drunk.

Esperanza natters shrilly to her brother Santiago, he of the absolutely worst hair. She doesn't want to see her friends, they all talk about babies, they surely are gossiping about her husband's bastard son... she beats on her brother and shrieks that he has to make Luis do something. She still hasn't told Luis she's pregnant.

Aurelio (house manager at the Palacio de Lara) (1) brings to Cristóbal Juana's request that he visit her in the morning; (2) mentions the strange tea-time visit, to Catalina, of Diego and Rodrigo (which makes Cristóbal jealous); (3) moans that Aunt Isabel's papers are absolute chaos (remember, she hired him to make sense of her holdings). "There are even boxes of papers coming from Peru which nobody has ever looked at." Cristobal: "Ahh, her inheritance from her Aunt Perpetua!" [I THINK.]

Cristóbal, bucked up by his sister's info that Catalina likes him, cheerfully eats a piece of fruit in Catalina's presence, says a few halting words of no import, and walks on by. Way to go.

I post the new update every Wednesday and Saturday morning. All Alborada recaps are now listed in the sidebar to the right - below the small picture of Modesta and Doña Juana, just above the elephant. Click on the numbers (ONE TWO THREE ... ETC) to find them!

Amor Real
Entre el Amor y el Odio

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