The doctor Portuondo, a Cuban psychiatrist who threw patients out of his office

October 30, 2021

The Cuban actor from 'Fresa y chocolate', 'Guantanamera', 'Cachito' and 'Bámbola' brings out his most eccentric side in his new work in Spain, the series 'Doctor Portuondo', under the direction of Carlo Padial

In the series Doctor Portuondo, Jorge Perugorría (Havana, 1965), unforgettable protagonist of Fresa y chocolate, by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, of Cachito, by Enrique Urbizu or of Una rosa de Francia, by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, dances, smokes, wears wool vests with impossible patterns and shouts. He shouts a lot.

In person, however, he is all Caribbean sweetness. Glued to a pipe, the veteran Cuban actor, who has been going to Spain to film movies for over 25 years, brings out his most eccentric side to embody his countryman Portuondo in the first production of the Filmin platform, created and directed by Carlo Padial.

How did you come to the project?
I was in Cuba when they sent me the script and from the first reading I was fascinated by the character. It's very well written. I started researching and my fascination for that person grew. It seems very logical to me that someone like that would leave such a deep mark on Carlo Padial. Then, of course, you have to do it and bring it to life. I prepared myself by reading and listening to real interviews with Portuondo.

The psychoanalyst is a brilliant Cuban who studied with the best professors, who believed that the Soviet model was incompatible with psychoanalysis. He had great admiration for Freud. He said that Freud was his father and that if he hadn't existed he would have had to invent him, because for him he was the greatest.

I see Portuondo as a tribute to those who have lived and suffered from being far from their homeland, says Pichy. It's a very powerful feeling that I've been able to explore through this character. Thanks to cinema I've met Cubans everywhere and they all live with that nostalgia that becomes something unreal over time. There exists an imagined Cuba that stems from their memories. It is, in a sense, a kind of self-psychoanalysis.

One of the things I've enjoyed most has been the generational encounter between Portuondo and Carlo. A man with ideas from the last century with a young man with the concerns of today.

When you spend so much time with a pipe in your mouth and stop doing it, do you notice its absence?

I don't know yet. But I've enjoyed it a lot and I'm suffering from having to stop playing him. I think that Portuondo, with or without a pipe, is going to stay with me for a long time.