Los Beltrán

*Los Beltrán*
Los Beltrán
Genre	Sitcom
Created by	Carlos R. Bermudez; Mike Millian
Starring	Emiliano Díez; Margarita Coego; Demetrius Navarro; Yeni Álvarez; Gabriel Romero; James C. Leary
Country of origin	United States
Original language	Spanish
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	44?
Production
Executive producers	Carlos R. Bermudez; Mike Millian
Running time	30 minutes
Production companies	Spanglish Entertainment (season 1); GaLAn Entertainment; Si Como No... Productions (season 2); Columbia TriStar Television
Original release
Network	Telemundo
Release	October 17, 1999 –; 2001

Los Beltrán (in English, "The Beltrans") was an American Spanish-language sitcom series, which aired on the U.S.-based network Telemundo from October 17, 1999 to 2001. Although canceled after two seasons, Los Beltrán received a number of media awards. Los Beltrán was the first sitcom in two decades to deal with the Cuban American experience (following the PBS bilingual sitcom ¿Qué Pasa, USA?, which aired from 1977 to 1980) and the first-ever Spanish-language entertainment series to feature sympathetic gay characters as regulars.

Plot

The series was based broadly on the 1970s U.S. sitcom All in the Family, by Norman Lear, and on its 1960s British antecedent, Till Death Us Do Part. The lead character, Manny Beltrán (Emiliano Díez), was an ultraconservative Cuban exile who owned a small bodega (neighborhood market) in southern California. Manny was comically obsessed with money, and with reason: he was financially supporting not only his wife Letti (Margarita Coego) and law-student daughter Anita (played by Yeni Álvarez), but also his daughter's militantly liberal husband, Miguel Perez (Demetrius Navarro), a Chicano art student who was constantly challenging his father-in-law's prejudices and politics, while living under Manny's roof and eating his food.

Unlike the families of Archie Bunker and Alf Garnett, however, the Beltráns in the first episode are moving up from their working-class digs to a nice, middle-class duplex in Burbank, which they've bought thanks to some lottery winnings. Upon moving in, they discover that their next-door neighbors (and holdover tenants) are a homosexual couple: a Spanish physician, Fernandito Salazar (Gabriel Romero), and his American boyfriend, Kevin Lynch (James C. Leary). This sets up a number of plot lines through the course of the series, much as did the Jeffersons moving in next door to the Bunkers in the early days of All in the Family.

Two particular episodes, focused on Fernandito and Kevin, got the series noticed by some English-language media. In the first season, Fernandito gets an unexpected visit from his father, a Spanish general (who resembles the late caudillo Francisco Franco), and in the end comes out to the father as gay. In the second season, Fernandito and Kevin have a commitment ceremony—shortly after Californians in real life had voted on, and passed into law, the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 22. This was the first same-sex wedding ceremony ever shown on a Spanish-language television series.

Cast

Emiliano Díez as Manny Beltrán
Margarita Coego as Letti Beltrán
Demetrius Navarro as Miguel Perez
Yeni Álvarez as Anita
Gabriel Romero as Fernandito Salazar
James C. Leary as Kevin Lynch

Episodes

Season 1

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date
1	1	TBA	Unknown	Unknown	October 17, 1999 (1999-10-17)

Season 2

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original air date
TBA	1	TBA	TBD	TBD	2000 (2000)

Awards and recognition

Los Beltrán received the 2001 Imagen Foundation Award for Best Comedy Series and the 2001 ALMA Award from the National Council of La Raza for Best Spanish Language Comedy Series. It was nominated for two GLAAD Media Awards, the first Spanish-language program so honored by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

External links