ASSITEJ Spain regrets the news of the death last Saturday of Julio Michel, founder and director of the Segovia International Puppet Festival, Titirimundi. Our association was fortunate enough to award him the 2004 ASSITEJ Spain National Award in recognition of the festival's work in developing puppetry and quality theater for children and young people.
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Julio Michel receives the 2004 ASSITEJ Spain National Award
Sadly, this loss joins that of another children's theatre personality, Carlos Herans, co-director of the International Theatre Weeks for Children between 1985-1996, who passed away last week.
Titirimundi announces with immense sadness the death of its director, Julio Michel
We never thought we'd have to announce or write this news. Titirimundi's director, Julio Michel, passed away yesterday afternoon while recovering from a serious operation in Barcelona., which he had overcome with courage and which gave us all hope, after living with cancer for these past few months. And we couldn't be sadder. Because we loved him. We've been lucky enough to love each other, to argue and negotiate, and to love each other, and to continue to do so.
We thought he was "eternal." Eternally stubborn and eternally beloved, his spirit, forever youthful and full of spontaneity, made us believe so, and empirically it seemed to be proven. Although the news has already been published ahead of time in the media and profiles, from your Festival we make public and official your departure from this Earth with intense sadness for which we barely have words, only a silence full of respect and love.Today the world has become smaller, smaller, and it couldn't be more gray despite the sun.
Julio Michel's body will arrive in Segovia tomorrow, Sunday, June 25, and will be received at the San Juan de la Cruz Funeral Home (C/ de los Tercios Segovianos s/n) at 6 p.m.Anyone who wishes to join us is free to do so. His wife, his four children, his team and his friends and colleagues thank you for your displays of affection.Soon, here on the Festival website, we'll also be leaving some contact information so you can send personal messages.
Later, when all the emotions are in place, we will celebrate his life as he would have wanted: with a party.A party with food, with music, with puppets. Because Titirimundi has always been that, a great celebration of the senses where the marvelous bursts into the everyday, and the spirit of Julio Michel is the one who led this great party like a magician who, at the last moment, would always pull out of his own hands—with a mischievous smile and great anticipation—a handkerchief that would turn into a little mouse. Today, we look to the sky with an ace of hearts up our sleeve.
Julio Michel (San Martin de Valdetuéjar, Leon, 1946) He had arrived in Segovia in the 70s, he was a puppeteer, son of May 68 who rejected all official and corseted formulas, with whose company, Libélula –formed by another heiress of the most revolutionary Romanticism, Lola Atance–, performed in various cities. She then decided she wanted to do her part to revitalize Segovia's artistic scene, and through La Promotora, an association of visual artists, she took charge of managing the arrival of theater companies to the city. In 1985, together with Juan Peñalosa, Isabel Urzurrun and Isabel González, Titirimundi was born in Segovia., in the desire for a beauty that never ends and that art has the power to regenerate again and again with freedom, fantasy, creativity, genuine joy, enthusiasm, a capacity for criticism, and irony. An international festival that celebrated spring and altruistically sought to sow and spread puppet theater, inviting the city to a great discovery, with the same wonder that magicians provoke. "I wanted to create a space where we were all citizens and where we could enter the world of utopia, that world where everything is called into question," he expressed in a statement in an article published in ADE Teatro. And he did it with his free, dreamy, and playful spirit, with his genius, his hands, and his words, knowing that he was wielding a dramatic tool with powers of suggestion close to magic and illusion. His life's work has been Titirimundi, a festival capable of transforming Segovia in a city taken over by the theatre of illusion, a large open stage made up of courtyards, deconsecrated churches, theatres and historic corners that are part of the heritage - "a perfect and enviable setting", he stated - where "keeping words in your pocket" or "touching the moon with your hands" is not a pipe dream, but a dream come true.
