The Sunday Read: ‘The Man Who Made Spain the Magic Capital of the World’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Going out to dinner with Juan Tamariz in Madrid is a little like accompanying a cartoon character on a journey to the real world. As Shuja Haider, the author of today’s Sunday Read, walked with him on side streets off the city center’s main drag, the Calle Gran Vía, heads turned left and right. Mr. Tamariz, 80, has been a professional magician for 52 years, and in that time, he has managed the singular feat of becoming both a household name in his home country and a living legend in magic everywhere. David Blaine has called him “the greatest and most influential card magician alive.” But in Spain, Mr. Tamariz is an icon, less like Mr. Blaine or David Copperfield and more like Kermit the Frog. In the United States, the most visible performers of magic in the late 20th century were stage illusionists who worked with big boxes and flashing lights. But Mr. Tamariz appears on stage and screen armed with little more than his two hands. He introduced Spanish viewers to the style of magic called “close-up,” done with ordinary objects, in near-enough proximity for a conversation and incorporating the participation of spectators.

Transcript

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0:00.0	One of the most important things that art can do is remind us that the world is not always what it seems.
0:06.0	And magic really emphasizes this.
0:11.0	Magic is an art form, and it's an art form that shows you something that definitely should not have happened,
0:17.0	considering everything you know about the world, and yet you did see it happen.
0:23.0	I'm Shoja Hader, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:27.0	So magic was actually the first interest I ever had as a kid.
0:32.0	Lots of kids are into magic, they get magic sets and so on, but I actually won a magic competition when I was 13 years old.
0:39.0	I can still remember the Dewey Decimal Code where you find books on magic at the public library. It's 793.8.
0:46.0	So, are you ready for some magic?
0:50.0	I remember seeing this TV special in the 90s called The World's Greatest Magic.
0:54.0	We're going to do some things tonight that have never been done before.
0:58.0	It was full of these big stage illusions with boxes and tigers and so on, but my favorite parts were the bits of close-up magic,
1:05.0	where someone's actually interacting with the magician.
1:08.0	There's a special kind of magic that's performed not on the stage, but an intimate surrounding is called Close-up Magic.
1:14.0	Someone's asked to pick a card or hold an object and the trick goes from there.
1:18.0	In a way it's even more amazing because the miracles happen only a few inches away.
1:23.0	It's unique in that it has to take place in person. Someone else has to be there.
1:27.0	So, it becomes intimate and it's often for an audience of one or a small group.
1:31.0	If you're there, it can actually be really moving to be part of the experience.
1:35.0	One of the most unforgettable magicians I saw on World's Greatest Magic.
1:39.0	I later found out is widely considered to be the greatest living magician in the world today.
1:44.0	One Tamaries.
	...

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