Miliki and Spain's TV clowns: from Cuba to RTVE with no way back

The TV clowns left Cuba before RTVE came calling

The Aragón family didn't leave Cuba out of any martyr's vocation. They left when the regime's numbers stopped adding up. Gaby, Fofó and Miliki were already making television in Havana when TV in Spain was still a rumour: radio was the medium here, and the television set took years more to reach Spanish living rooms. That detail, which resurfaces every time the topic comes up, dismantles the simplest version of the story: they didn't flee a poor country for a rich one, but quite the opposite.

From Cuban television to the American 'pension payer'

The clowns worked as 'pension payers' across the pond, like so many Spaniards who went to make their fortunes in the Americas, until fame and a good enough offer from RTVE allowed them to return. Before that there was a stopover in the Southern Cone, and that's where the second nuance that breaks the binary narrative comes in: some argue the trigger wasn't just the Cuban regime, but that the economy was starting to sour on the Pampas. Milikito, the son, was Cuban by birth. And that same Milikito would go on to found La Sens decades later, which is the most ironic twist of the whole show.

An exile that belonged to others, paid for by Spanish audiences

The outcome boils down to one uncomfortable fact: the uprooting of a few artists gave us the happiest childhood of several generations. Professionals who left with next to nothing ended up becoming the biggest audience draw of Spanish public television. The full story, with names, dates and stopovers, is told in an RNE podcast that everyone should listen to before pontificating on the matter.

If a serious reckoning of the price that generation paid is ever done, the tally will predictably come out badly for all sides. Though, considering what it costs today to fill a studio with anything other than noise, nostalgia will probably keep winning out over analysis.