Antonio Castells Trujillo

Castells, whom national memory has involuntarily relegated to oblivion, despite the brilliance he brought to his country with his extensive work, was, according to Núñez Rodríguez, one of the best sainete writers Cuba has ever had, a master of costumbrismo and a rebel who broke with the conventions of the society in which he lived. He, with his wit and humor, brought to life a little Black man (Chicharito) and a Galician (Sopeira) who left a deep mark on the history of humorous entertainment on the Island.

Son of Spanish parents—his father, Catalan, used to write music—, Castells was born in La Habana, in 1885, and was initially a tobacco roller and tobacco factory reader. He also worked as a prompter in Spanish theater companies that came to La Habana and continuously hired him, due to his exceptional characteristics for that work. It is said that he stood out among those who performed that function because he communicated with the actors without being heard by the audience. For some time he worked simultaneously as a tobacco worker, prompter, and writer for radio and theater, with his sainetes and one-act plays.

In his work as a tobacco factory reader, he increased his culture, which greatly served him in his life as a writer. While it is true that he was unable to pursue university studies, he was a man of vast knowledge and with a very firm sense of national identity.

He was, moreover, a natural pedagogue, as he educated his children and grandchildren ceaselessly, maintaining perpetual vigilance in defense of the language, with corrections he made against any linguistic error spoken in his presence.

Whoever did not know him could not suppose that they were in the presence of a great humorist, since he was introverted and quiet. He was equally modest, reflective, profound, and more straightforward than jocular in everyday life. Nevertheless, he was capable of making people laugh heartily without abandoning his unmistakable seriousness. His work is very Cuban, as was the work of Ernesto Lecuona in music, his friend and frequent visitor to the family home on Flores Street, in Santos Suárez, restored a few years ago by the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad.

Castells worked tirelessly and cultivated the vernacular as few others did, with his own captivating way of approaching what was domestic, what was characteristic of Cuba. It is not an exaggeration to say that his theatrical pieces can be part of the best anthologies of the genre, while on radio his program of Chicharito and Sopeira monopolized for more than a decade the preference of an audience that laughed at those characters portrayed by Alberto Garrido and Federico Piñero, the Little Black Man and the Galician that Cuban theater brought to the stage so often.

Chicharito and Sopeira was a program that aired Monday through Saturday, at one o'clock in the afternoon, on CMQ Radio, in the Cadena Crusellas program. For it, Castells created, in the more than 1500 scripts he wrote for the space, humorous situations of unparalleled humor, exploiting to a great extent the national events of the time and the Cuban professional baseball championship. The games between the so-called eternal rivals, the teams of Habana and Almendares, prompted constant clashes in those Castells scripts between the little Black man Chicharito (almendarista) and the Galician Sopeira (habanista). When the rivalry of the championship became acute, great discussions took place between these characters, often with a certain bias toward Habana, the team with which the writer sympathized.

Only poor health could keep Castells away from Chicharito and Sopeira. When he became ill, he proposed to Núñez Rodríguez—who had already made some contributions to the program—that he substitute for him as scriptwriter, which he accepted, maintaining with his recognized talent the original prominence of the radio space.

It is said that Castells, at eight in the morning, would have a coffee in a corner of the patio of his house on Flores Street, prepare his typewriter, and read the day's newspapers in search of situations he could use in his scripts, which ended with a verse related to current national events. His professionalism and confidence were such that he had the great luxury of writing his script just a few hours before the program aired. Once his work was done, he would take a streetcar and personally deliver his pages to the radio station, day after day, just in time to arrive at CMQ.

Castells was a founding member, from May 11, 1923, of the Sindicato de Coristas y Apuntadores de la República de Cuba, and in 1928 was Provisional President of the Unión Nacional de Apuntadores de Teatro. He also contributed to the drafting of the Bases of Remuneration and Labor of the members of that Union.

In June 1940 he joined the team of contributors to the magazine Radio Guía, a monthly publication that identified itself as the official organ of the Asociación Nacional de Radioescuchas. This great humorist wrote much and varied work. He made twenty-one parodies of famous songs, among them Farolito de Madrid, La vaca lechera, and La última noche; forty-nine sainetes, written between 1930 and 1950; zarzuelas, such as Niña Rita or La Habana 1830, which was presented for three weeks to packed theaters in Madrid, with music by Ernesto Lecuona and Eliseo Grenet; comic intermezzos, lyric comedies, interludes, musical comic plays, operettas, sainete sketches, revues, a lyric comic sainete, etcetera. He also wrote lyrics for songs, such as Mama Inés and Calesero, and worked in favor of rescuing national customs.

Already ill, as his end drew near, he wrote the poem Ilusión de abuela, masterfully recited by declaimer Luis Carbonell.

Antonio Castells passed away in La Habana, on May 8, 1950.