The sudden and tragic loss of Juan Gabriel this weekend has left us all in a pop culture daze. At 66 years old, Juanga towered over the world of Spanish-language pop and rivaled modern history’s biggest artists in terms of cultural impact. Now we will be left with only the imitators, the wannabes, and Juan Gabriel’s 1,800 song discography to shine a light of musical hope during those darkest nights of the soul.
That is, until November, when Telemundo will bring US and Puerto Rican audiences one final parting gift Juan Gabriel left for his millions of fans across the world – a biographical television series. That’s right, before he left us for his galactic abode, Juan Gabriel (aka Alberto Aguilera Valadez) executive produced Hasta que te conocí, a 13-part series in collaboration with Disney Latin America, promising us one last intimate moment with el Divo de Juárez before moving on with our lives in peace.
The series follows the music icon’s novela-worthy life story, from his parents’ courtship in 1920s Michoacán up through the peak of his artistic glory. Along the way we can plan on catching details like the campesino father who went mad after accidentally burning his fields, Juanga’s escape from the boy’s school in Ciudad Juárez, his adolescent years spent hustling his guitar through the border nightclub scene, the false arrest for robbery, and of course, his hard-won triumph
Judging from the trailer, the series does all of this in a glossy style with promising performances from Colombian telenovela veteran Julián Román and Dolores Heredia as Juanga’s beloved mother, Victoria. So far the series has already screened in its entirety across Latin America on TNT, and the channel will be honoring the artist’s passing with a very special marathon starting tonight, with a second broadcast on September 10th. A final date has not yet been confirmed for stateside broadcast, but Telemundo confirmed just last Thursday that it will air sometime in November.