Chiquito de la Calzada: Google Doodle celebrates Spanish flamenco singer’s 90th birthday

Google Doodle celebrates the 90th birthday of a Spanish flamenco singer, actor, and stand-up comedian Chiquito de la Calzada on May 28, 2022.

Who was Chiquito de la Calzada?

Gregorio Esteban Sánchez Fernández, known as Chiquito de la Calzada, was born on 28 May 1932 in Málaga, Spain.

He was nicknamed Chiquito (“little boy”) by the early age that he began to work, satisfying after he was born on the road of Calzada de la Trinidad in the neighborhood of La Trinidad, consequently, his artistic name was Chiquito de la Calzada.

Chiquito de la Calzada’s reputation as a flamenco dancer caused Chiquito to move along Spain acting in a few theaters, and even he resided for two years in Japan in the middle 80s, where he made a trip to teach dance flamenco to the Japanese. In 1950 he married Josefa “Pepita” García Gómez, who was his long-time love.

Chiquito de la Calzada spent the vast majority of his adult life performing flamenco all through Spain and abroad. After spending 54 years in the flamenco industry, his life went off in a strange direction when he crossed paths with a TV producer named Tomás Summers at a restaurant.

In the mid-’90s, at 62 years of age and after 54 years as a flamenco dancer, Chiquito de la Calzada was found by an extraordinary audience by showing up in the TV show Genio y figura (1994), a contest with a brand new stand up comedians where he succeeded by his specific and special sense of humor.

His dreamlike method for making a joke caused staggering fast fame in the country because of words and expressions that eventually were turned into the language of popular culture, being one of the most popular and dearest comedians in the 90s in Spain.

After the cancellation of the TV show the next year, Chiquito de la Calzada kept showing up in various films and other TV shows throughout the years, involving similar styles in his performances. With time Chiquito would be perceived as one of the greatest humorists of all time, winning the affection and love of all Spanish. He retired from the scene in 2012 after the pass away of Pepita, missing from the public eye and making very few appearances or interviews.

Chiquito de la Calzada became very popular in Spanish TV shows (particularly Genio y figura) during the mid-nineties because of his special style, firmly founded on a dreamlike way to deal with jokes and language and constant movement while telling his jokes, placing his hands in his waist as though he was in pain. Some of his characteristic words and expressions, for example, fistro or jarl as well as his comical correlations, “this is more dangerous than a shooting in an elevator” immediately became memes and are currently part of Spanish slang.

Chiquito de la Calzada’s moves and language were so influential to other Spanish comedians, that some TV characters, for example, Crispín Klander, Lucas Grijander, and Nuñito de la Calzada were completely worked around his repertoire. There is a mod for the video game Doom highlighting his voice.

Chiquito de la Calzada died on November 11, 2017, in the hospital of Málaga by heart complexities after a fall occurred in his home, brought about by angina pectoris. He was incinerated, at the same that Pepita and their remains rest together in the columbarium of the Saint Paul’s church of Malaga.

On 18 February 2019, the Ministry of Culture of Spain honored Chiquito de la Calzada’s cultural impact by awarding him a Medalla de Oro al mérito en las Bellas Artes (Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts).

On May 28, 2022, Google featured a Doodle on its homepage for celebrating Chiquito de la Calzada’s 90th Birthday.