Black suits him well. She is wearing a set of wide, muscular pants and a long, impeccable chiffon jacket. The short hair, fresh from the hairdresser. The blue eyes, the seductive look. She is an elegant, sophisticated and wild woman. Pure beauty.
“I am bold on the verge of madness,” he told NEWS a few years ago. His story is like a movie. She was a luxury model between the ’60s and early ’80s. He made advertisements of all kinds. He traveled the world with his partner – the model, publicist and businessman Alberto “Nono” Pugliesewho died tragically in 1993 – advertising L&M cigarettes.
He acted in cinema. He is a fan of cars, he ran rallies and owned a Rolls Royce. He lived in the United States, Saint Thomas and Uruguay. She married Armando Sánchez at 18, with whom she had her daughter Candela, who lives in Saint Thomas. She was in a relationship for 28 years with Pugliese, father of her son Francisco, who resides in Los Angeles and is the owner of the production company D’Avant Garde Media. She had lovers and a marriage proposal from the Maharaja of Baroda, who saw her only once in the elevator of the Dorchester Hotel in London. She is the grandmother of the twins Pedro and Aurora (16) and Francisco (25).
“Today happiness and joy define me. It’s not easy, but I always had humor. Things happen, the bad and the good, because life is a passage. I am aware that I am living my last stage, without dramasit could be ten or fifteen more years. So, curves don’t scare me, I take them straight,” he says. Claudia Sanchez during his talk with NOTICIAS in his Barrio Norte apartment, where a painting by Carlos Gorriarena, another by Martín Demirjian, sculptures by Juan Stoppani and a photo of a painting that Martha Peluffo made with the image of Claudia and Nono stand out.
News: What gives you happiness and joy?
Sanchez: Realizing that my arms are not the same, they are fatter, more flaccid, but they hug. That my legs are not the same as they were at 20, they fell a little, but I walk, I can climb a staircase and go down it. The secret of my joy is realizing that my children are fine, that my grandchildren are fantastic, that we don’t have drug dramas in the family, alcoholism, or bad times. I think I am privileged and when I realize it I feel very good.
News: What is this moment like?
Sanchez: It’s having a good time. When they give me a bad look or answer me badly, I don’t get angry, I don’t get hooked, I leave. Don’t let them take away my happiness. I am like animals, I stay when there is a caress, otherwise I leave. I am an animal and I love that. So, I can enjoy the water, the rain, the cold, the heat. I like simplicity, it is the greatest beauty.
News: What have you learned over the years?
Sanchez: To enjoy, fundamentally to enjoy a delicious meal, a nice photography exhibition, a good philharmonic, which has extraordinary musicians, a theater piece that I like, like “James Brown used rollers”, so I go five Sundays in a row. As long as there are artists, music, theater, cinema, books, I don’t need more. When Almudena Grande died I was with one of her books and I started to cry, I felt like a friend had left, because she was with me. I miss her.
News: What other things make you cry?
Sanchez: Beauty also moves me. The first time I was in London and went to the Tate Gallery and saw a huge Turner, I cried. I love painting, I am also moved by an Alonso, a Berni. I cry before music when it is well played, a cello, yes, it moves me.
News: So, he is living his 84 years very well.
Sanchez: Couldn’t be better. I laugh, and I start laughing at myself.
News: How does the word old age sound to you?
Sanchez: I don’t know her and I think I’m going to ignore her forever, it’s a state of mind that I don’t know. I think I’m going to be a crazy old woman, I’m going to be.
News: Your strengths?
Sanchez: The humor. I have a lot of fun with myself, with my children, especially with Francisco, because men are simpler, women are more complicated.
News: Its weakest aspects?
Sanchez: That’s why I don’t have patience. I don’t have the patience to listen to dramas, I run away. How can a kitten, a puppy, give me compassion? I put food for the birds. I have patience for children, but not for the dramas of adults. I can help, give advice, but not stop at that. I have no patience for myself either. With diseases you have to operate and that’s it, I don’t even mention it.
News: She overcame two breast cancers and another lung cancer and also has COPD. How is it now?
Sanchez: Splendid. I had knee surgery, I had a thrombosis, I had rehabilitation, they told me I wouldn’t walk, I was in a wheelchair. They wanted to modify the bathrooms at home and I said: “No way, in a year I’ll come and dance the malambo.” And I swear I’m ready to dance the malambo. I don’t surrender. I want to walk to the box.
News: He has had an exciting life. Do you feel nostalgic for the past?
Sanchez: Not only am I not nostalgic, but it is something that could not be done today in any way. First, because of the amount of tourism there is, which is almost harmful to the cities. I knew a sailing, nautical Saint Thomas, today there are huge cruise ships. We were three people with a camera, even the Americans were amazed and that’s why we continued working with them. They hired me to go to China in ’82, because the Philipp Morris factory was opening there, but it was just the Falklands War. Today I am here to do the same thing I did abroad, but with the train from Jujuy, I would love to tour my country. For me, tourism is knowing, interacting, pacifying, making friends.
News: What projects do you have?
Sánchez: Writing my life, that’s what I’m doing. It’s an internal walk, and since I like to walk, I’m a dog’s paw like Mom used to say.
News: You said that since you were little you were very in love. Did he always fall in love or were they…?
Sánchez: Whims? No, I’m not capricious at all. I am passionate. One thing is passion, falling in love, and another thing is wanting. Wanting is forever, it is very important, and it is a fortune to achieve it. I had deep love with my two husbands. I loved Armando and Nono very much, I love them, and I know that I will have a lot of fun when we meet again. We were married to Armando for four or five years and we continued to have a very good relationship until he died, and with Nono we were a couple for 28 years. The three of us had a lot of fun together, we laughed a lot. It was hard work, which took time, but I managed to spend the holidays, birthdays, and Christmas with the whole family together, the Sánchezes and the Pugliese.
News: Nono died when he fell from a roof, while trying to escape from a photographer, after having dinner in a Palermo restaurant with a woman with whom he supposedly had an affair. Were you separated at that time?
Sánchez: No, we were not separated and he denied that romance. She was a married woman who lived with her husband and three children and who had frequented our house. I had told Nono to take it out on her, if he wanted, that our relationship was not going to be destroyed because of that. The night he died I was in Punta del Este, they told me and I came immediately.
News: Did you feel betrayed?
Sánchez: No, not at all, they are human things. I had been with him for 28 years, and they told him twice that he was cute and he got excited. I didn’t tell him that he was cute, but I corrected him in everything. “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” like every ball fan or like every woman who mistreats her husband. Then, suddenly someone tells him you’re perfect, and how I like it, and we go to bed and they have sex seven times together in one day. Well, any man gets confused. He was with a new broom, men are very naive. They change tits, what do I know what happens to them. That’s why we are more and more with each other, and it’s not that we get weird. We already know them so much and they all become like children.
News: Today would you like to fall in love?
Sanchez: I live in love with everything. I talk about Gorriarena and I get excited. His paintings are full of light, they enter through the eyes, but they reach your soul. I am in love with thousands of things, I have friends that I love very much, who do important things, and I am the joy of their paintings, their photographs, their plays. That’s love too. Now, if you talk to me about sexual love, as a couple, no, no one inspires that in me.
News: Are you the person you wanted to be?
Sánchez: Now yes, because I live more of everything. There were times when I couldn’t do what I wanted, I had to take care of myself. Now I’m also with the people I really love, even new people. I don’t have to do anything else out of commitment. I am very curious, I am active all the time and having a social life. Additionally, this year I participated in two films. In “Las Corrientes”, a Swiss-Argentine production directed by Milagros Mumenthaler, I played the mother of an executive. And the other was a short film related to the Miu Miu clothing brand, I was the director of the company, it was filmed in Trenque Lauquén and directed by Laura Citarella. They were wonderful experiences for me, I felt like a fish in water. I am an artist, an artist of life. Since she was little she lived acting in front of the mirror. I like nothing more in this life.
News: How would you like to be remembered?
Sánchez: Like a funny girl, a good girl.
Thanks: Marisa Marana. Dr María José
Gottref, dermatologist
