From Rafael to Rappel, the story of the man who reads in the stars and who is loved by the stars

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"I was born in Madrid, in a family of fashion-related merchants and I am the eldest of three brothers", is how Rappel begins to describe himself on his website. And from the beginning he gives clues as to how his beginnings in the world of show business were. The famous seer visits 'Masters of Sewing' and few know that his professional career began in the world of fashion. Rafael Francisco Payá Pinilla was born on August 20, 1945 and from a very young age he felt that he would follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, who had an exclusive business of exquisite fabrics that came to be financed by Cristóbal Balenciaga. The most elegant women in Madrid dressed with these fabrics and a young Rafael rubbed shoulders with high society when he was only 15 years old. "I've had very drastic changes in my life: I got my degree as a French teacher from the Sorbonne University but I never practiced," he says.

With the support of their fabulous clients, the family opened a sewing shop in the Salamanca district. It was in 1962 and nine years later, when she was 26, she opened her own couture house. The success was immediate and he had a legion of loyal clients, including women as 'important' as Doña María de las Mercedes, Countess of Barcelona, ​​and Carmen Polo, and even Empress Soraya and a young Carmen Cervera. "I was a haute couture designer for 22 years, revolutionizing fashion with shows dancing to the sound of music," he says in his biography.

His intense life is full of anecdotes, curiosities and secrets. Rapell's adventures, what he recounts and what he is silent would make for a book, a movie or even a television series, in the purest 'Cuéntame' style. Few people know that in 1971 he married Luisa Chaverri and that he has three children (two daughters and a son) and a grandson, Marcos. He has always been a little jealous of his private life but he has never been bothered by being asked about his family, on the contrary. Rappel was always a character in the social chronicle, but curiously he has never commercialized with his life.

Her favorite color is purple because it signifies security, power and wealth. Everything is purple in her bedroom, from the walls to the bedding. But this is not what draws the attention of the room because all the prominence is taken by your closet. His famous tunics hang from his hangers, only a small collection, because the vast majority, about two thousand, are kept in an industrial warehouse.

But... who doesn't know Rappel? Fame first came to him from fashion but, and in all good stories there is always a 'but', this was going to change. Fate, always capricious, had prepared another path for him: to predict the future. His first clients were the clients of his shop and his fame as a psychic grew so much that he came to know the secrets of people like Franco, La Pasionaria, Severo Ochoa, Christina Onassis... He has moved like a fish in water in the world of famous, he was at Lolita's wedding, and became the director of Public Relations of the iconic Florida Park nightclub in Madrid.

Everybody don't know how to make pasta salad unfortunately

— Empress Sun Feb 07 18:34:54 +0000 2021

He has always liked television, and television has always liked him, which has always seen him as a magnet for the general public. The way he dresses powerfully draws attention but also his stories with all the celebrities he has known and knows. He is a recurring guest on "heart" programs, such as Lazos de sangre, on TVE, in which he tells the story in the first person, such as the wedding of Lolita Flores and Guillermo Furisane, which he attended as a guest.

Curiously, it began on television in children's programs with the great María Luisa Seco, when TVE did 'magic' from the center of Paseo de la Habana, where years later Ana Obregón and Ramón García did the What we bet, and where Rocío Jurado's special was recorded, months before the singer from Chipiona died. And Rappel was in both programs, as a guest and as a friend.

But he has not only done television, Rappel has worked on the radio and has written several books, including 'My favorite virgins', 'The fortune of dreams' and ' The saints await us', of which seventy editions were made and translated into Italian. And, of course, he has a small career as an actor and has participated in plays and television series.

Rappel is one of the most well-known and beloved faces, a celebrity always surrounded by celebrities. Among her close friends names like Lola Flores, Rocío Jurado, Carmen Sevilla, Paquita Rico, Gunilla Von Bismarck, Raffaella Carrá, Paloma San Basilio, María Dolores Pradera... "For me they are not artists, they are my sisters", she has said. always.

He met Cristina Onassis and Liz Taylor, about whom he always tells a beautiful anecdote. "I was 22 or 23 years old when Coco Chanel introduced her to me in Paris. My father and I were going to buy fabrics and when the show was about to start, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who was her husband at the time, appeared. She sat next to me. side in the parade and it caught her attention that she was so young. We were talking and I told her that I had worked with Balenciaga, that he had been like a brother to my grandfather. She, impressed, told me: But what do you say? Have you worked with the Master? I told him that my parents had a fabric business and that I wanted to open my own fashion house upstairs. He told me that he would go to Madrid to visit me, but he never did." But that, surely, he already knew.