The actor Celso Bugallo has died in Pontevedra at the age of 78 and will be cremated this Sunday in the strictest privacy. Bugallo was recognized for his role in “The Sea Inside,” a film directed by Alejandro Amenábar, and received the 2005 Goya Award for Best Supporting Actor.
For this reason, his name will always be linked to that of this film, which tells the life (and death) of Ramón Sampedro, one of Spain’s emblematic figures in defense of the euthanasia. “‘The Sea Inside’ is not sad, but rather conveys hope. There is a lot of humor in it. Although the ending with death may be sad, it is not, because Sampedro’s will is fulfilled,” said Bugallo at the time of the premiere The voice of Galicia.
Throughout his career, Bugallo took part in productions such as “The Night of the Sunflowers” (2006), where he played the corporal of the Civil Guard and won the Best Supporting Actor award from the Circle of Film Writers of Spain. He was also nominated again for the Goya for his work in “The Good Patron” (2021).
Born in SanxenxoIn 1947, Pontevedra, Bugallo began his artistic career in theater in the 70s, joining the independent groups Adefesio Teatro Estudio and Lope de Rueda. He later founded and directed the group JUBY (Juventud Unida del Barrio de Yagüe), which won the National Prize for Comedy Theater in 1976 with the play “El retablo del flautista”, and was co-founder of the Olimpo theater group in Galicia. “I try to find the stimuli that cause a character to behave in this way. Each of us carries the entire form of human existence within us and actors, from the beggar to the king, can represent a whole range of archetypes and provide a more or less reliable representation of the characters we play,” he said in a recent interview with the magazine theater.
After a career on the theater stage, he made his film debut at the age of 52. It was in 1999 directed by José Luis Cuerda in the film “The Language of Butterflies”. He then made a career in the seventh art in films that have gone down in the history of Spanish cinema: he was part of notable titles such as “Mondays in the Sun” (2002), “The Carpenter’s Pencil” (2003), “The Life That Awaits You” (2004), “The Inner Island” (2009), “Palm Trees in the Snow” (2015) and “The Beach of the Drowned” (2015).
On television, Bugallo took part in series such as “Mareas vivas”, “Rías Baixas”, “Periodistas”, “Los hombres de Paco”, “El Incident” and “Fariña”. And that, as he confessed in an interview on “La Voz de Galicia” in 2022, he didn’t even have a television. “I don’t like what they’re giving,” he said. “I think it would do me more harm than it could teach me. Those of us who work as creators need to be careful about our mental cleanliness.”
Bugallo, who said several times that he always wanted to be one James Dean After seeing “Rebel Without a Cause,” he worked until the end. As he said in the Galician newspaper: “Real actors never retire, why if they can work until the end of their lives?”
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