“Even now, I start crying when I think about it. But I tell myself, it was 23 years ago. It was one page in the book of my life. I can’t tear the page out, but the thing that happened is not the whole book.”
‘Farruquito’ is now 44 years old. He is a flamenco dancer. Indeed, he has been labelled the best of the century.
On September 30, 2003, when he was 21 years old, his world changed for ever.
Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya (to give him his real name) was out having fun with friends in Sevilla, his hometown. He admits he took a lot of drugs that night.
His ‘stupid mistake’, as he calls it, was to get behind the wheel of a car.
In the early hours of the morning, he sped through a red light without stopping, and his car struck an innocent pedestrian, Benjamin Olalla.
Farruquito drove off. He didn’t check on his victim, and he didn’t report the accident.
Mr. Olalla died.
Farruquito is now releasing a documentary about that night and the legal case it engendered. He accepts full responsibility, but quibbles with some side issues.
“I made a very serious mistake,” he says. “But I want to set the record straight. It was said that I didn’t have a driving licence, and that I tried to blame my brother. All of that is false.”
When he is challenged on his failure to tell the police about striking the pedestrian, his response is not very convincing. He claims that he felt obliged to stay silent, ‘out of respect for the victim’.
The new film is open to the criticism that it’s an exercise in self-justification, a bid to whitewash his name and jump-start his stalled career.
Certainly, some of his logic is a little tortured. He asserts strongly that he is not shirking responsibility, but he says that the experience has not made him a better person, because he’s always been good.
Juan Manuel comes from one of the great gypsy flamenco dynasties.
His father was a famous singer, and his grandfather – ‘El Farruco’ – was a legendary dancer. Juan himself made his showbiz debut on Broadway, at the age of 5.
To his fans, Farruquito is a naïve artist who made a dreadful mistake two decades ago, and has paid for it (apart from having found it hard to get bookings, he was convicted of hit-and-run manslaughter and served a year and a half in prison).
Everyone, they say, deserves a second chance.
His detractors point out that a second chance is exactly what he deprived Benjamin Olalla of.
A young man from a privileged background knowingly broke the law, drove a car when he was intoxicated with drugs, and killed a man. He then kept quiet for days, knowing full well that he was guilty.
The title of the new documentary is You Will Be Farruquito.
No doubt the filmmakers intended it to mean that a true artist must follow his destiny, no matter what difficulties life might put in his way. We are what we are.
However, there will be others likely to interpret it as meaning, ‘you are a dyed-in-the-wool delinquent, and serious crime comes naturally to you’.
Is talent enough? Does Farruquito deserve a revival?
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