Verano azul

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Verano azul (Blue Summer) was a famous Spanish television show from 1981 directed by Antonio Mercero. It tells of the adventures of a few friends ages 9 - 17 while on summer vacation in Nerja, a small town in the Costa del Sol, Andalucia, in Southern Spain. The series, with 18 episodes that drew up to 20 million viewers in Spain, has been rerunned almost every summer since then and has left a deep impact on several generations and has become part of Spain's common memory. The series was also broadcasted in Latin America, in Portugal and in some non-Latin-speaking countries like Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Poland.

Also it was very popular in Czechoslovakia.

[edit] Characters

The main characters include the children and teenagers Bea (Pillar Torres), Desi (Christina Torres), Javi (Juanjo Artero), Pancho (José Luis Fernández), Quique (Gerardo Garrido), Piraña (Miguel Ángel Valero), and Tito (Miguel Joven), and two adults, the retired sailor Chanquete (Antonio Ferrandis) and the painter Julia (María Garralón).

[edit] Cultural Significance

For Bulgarians and Poles born in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, Verano Azul introduced certain serious teen themes that were otherwise never seen on a Totalitarian TV, such as the hippie lifestyle, parental divorce, and the death of close friends. It was one of very few youth-oriented TV shows and stood out with its freedom from messages of ideological indoctrination. Even in the 2000s, chance encounters between Spaniards and Bulgarians erupt in happy shouting at the mention of Verano Azul.