El Gran Picasso and his ping-pong balls

I bumped into El Gran Picasso in a bar down south and thought stories of his epic exploits in Vegas must have been exaggerated, but no. Star juggler Dick Franco recalls the guys–principally Europe-based–who showed him the way:

To clarify, the ping-pong act involves spitting out the balls and then catching them in one’s mouth. I tried it with Bobal grapes and had to shoo away passing ambulances.

I think I’m right in saying that El Gran Picasso is from a village in La Manchuela, where he now occasionally advises on domino strategy, but he apparently also has orange groves down Valencia way. Rumour has it that he doesn’t let anyone into the mansion he built with his earnings in order to keep it clean, rather as people who acquire washing machines late in life tend to hand-wash everything before whirling the tub. He is unrelated to the eponymous Mexican wrestling sensation, and old Pablo kept damn quiet about Spain’s greatest 20th century artist. Why isn’t there more information about people like this on the net?

(
Mr Franco says a lot of interesting things during the course of the interview cited above. Here’s his take on the differences between the American and European juggling markets:

What on earth does “but do you eat the apple?” mean? And why do people talk about El Gran Picasso as el paletero?
)

Related posts

• Euro woes
• Picasso
• State-directed swamping of Catalonia by immigrants from other parts of Spain
• More Francophone condemnations of the US
• What Theo van Gogh really said

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