Tuesday at Zenda. Nonfiction Literature Tuesdays. Tuesday, in this case, dedicated to The Kidnapping of Di Stéfano (Pepitas), a book by Jimeno José Hernández Droulers, which recounts the days of captivity of the Real Madrid footballer and the scar it left on the later life of the Argentine superstar, but it is also the story of his kidnapper, Paúl del Río, who became a renowned artist and lived in Venezuela through the rise and fall of the revolutionary process. A chronicle that unfolds across two landscapes: a political one and a footballing one—the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and the splendor of Real Madrid.
In the words of the publisher itself: “In August 1963 two men appeared at the Potomac Hotel in Caracas, where Real Madrid was staying, identified themselves as police, and asked Alfredo Di Stéfano to accompany them to the station to give a statement about a drug matter. Purita, the hotel hairdresser, saw them leave and, sensing that something strange was happening, called her husband, the journalist Lázaro Candal. Hours later the news broke in the Spanish press: Di Stéfano had been kidnapped by the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional. From that moment began an extraordinary plot in which not only the footballer and his kidnappers were involved, but executives, ambassadors, ministers and even the highest leaders of Venezuela and Spain: Rómulo Betancourt and Francisco Franco“.
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Author: Jimeno Hernández Droulers. Title: The Kidnapping of Di Stéfano. Publisher: Pepitas. Sales: Todostuslibros.com.