Gilda Love
Gilda Love | |
|---|---|
![Portrait of [Name]](/restyle/wiki/File:Gilda_Love_Fumando.jpg) Gilda Love in 2021 | |
| Born | Eduardo Rondón Gallardo 21 August 1925 Cádiz, Spain |
| Died | 12 July 2026 (aged 100) Barcelona, Spain |
| Occupations |
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Eduardo Rondón Gallardo[1] (21 August 1925 – 12 July 2026), better known as Gilda Love, was a Spanish drag queen and transformist who became the oldest drag queen in the country.[2]
Life and career
[edit]Eduardo Rondón Gallardo was born in Cádiz, Spain on 21 August 1925. His mother married at 14 and had 20 children of which 16 survived. Eduardo had a twin sister; she was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck and did not survive childbirth.[3]
He grew up with six brothers and nine sisters. His brothers subjected him to systematic mistreatment and violence from an early age. "They were always harassing me, because they knew what I was," Eduardo told El País. When he was two, his dressmaker sister put him in a Sevillian suit. "She and my mother said it was pretty and that I looked like a girl," Eduardo recalled, "My brothers, when they saw me dressed like that, put a match to my dress and tried to burn me like Joan of Arc. I still have the scars on my back. They were horrible to me, but by some miracle they never killed me," he said.[4][3] He is the cousin of the first trans vedette, Sandra Salomé.[5]
At the age of 17, he enlisted in the army as a paratrooper where he served for three years.[6] After completing his mandatory military service, he left home, fleeing violence. After a brief period as a legionnaire, Eduardo abandoned Spain and moved to Marseille, France, and then to Paris. There he met several of the French trans pioneers, like Bambi and Capucine.[4]
Rondón first performed as Gilda Love in the Madame Arthur, in Paris.[2] He quickly began performing under his stage name in various cabarets in the 1960s and throughout his career he acted and shared a dressing room with the cuplé Carmen de Mairena.[1]
In 2022 he starred in the documentary film Cantando en las azoteas, directed by Enric Ribes, and whose title comes from the verses written by Federico García Lorca in his poem Canción del mariquita.[3] The documentary is based on a short film of the same name that Gilda Love produced in 2017.[7]
Love died on 12 July 2026, at the age of 100.[8]
References
[edit]- 1 2 Vázquez, Alberto (3 Aug 2022). "La increíble historia de Gilda Love". beKultura (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2024-02-15. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- 1 2 Fano, Rámon (7 June 2023). "Gilda Love es la drag queen que celebra su centenario". neo2 (in Spanish). Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- 1 2 3 Lorite Chinchón, Jaime (13 July 2022). "Gilda Love, the 97-year-old drag queen who survived it all: 'They cut up my dresses with razors, but I just danced in the shreds'". elpais.com. Archived from the original on 13 July 2026.
- 1 2 Blanco, Leticia (4 July 2022). "Gilda Love, memoria de la Barcelona travesti". El Mundo (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2026-07-13. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ↑ "Pierrot-Memorias Espectáculo Capitulo 7º". Carla Antonelli (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2026-07-13. Retrieved 2024-11-25.
- ↑ Vega, Charas (21 October 2020). "Entrevista a Gilda Love (protagonista de Cantando en las azoteas)". El Palomitrón (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 2026-07-13. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ↑ "El último transformista del Barrio Chino". El Periódico. May 2022. Retrieved 2024-02-15.
- ↑ "Eduardo Rondón Gallardo (Gilda Love): Esquelas y defunciones recientes". Mémora. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
External links
[edit]- Gilda Love at IMDb