Alfonso Vallejo

Alfonso Vallejo is a Spanish performer who played Don Pimpón in the Spanish version of Sesame Street from 1983 to 1987.

Vallejo began his career acting in José Luis García Sánchez's production Trout (1978).

On 1981, Vallejo appeared in Spanish TV series La Cometa Blanca, by Lolo Rico. This series featured some muppet sketches from the original Sesame Street. Vallejo also appeared on-screen with other actors that later would appear with him in Barrio Sésamo, mainly Mari Luz Olier and Ruth Gabriel (then known as Ruth Abellán). Vallejo appeared without any costume in this series.

On 1983, Vallejo was selected to play one of the monsters for the Spanish installment of Sesame Street. This series was given a chance in 1979, with other Spanish characters, but was not a success. Televisión Española decided to try again. Vallejo became Don Pimpón, a strange monster (full-sized costume) who interacted with Human characters and with other muppet Espinete. Vallejo became an important character and continued with this role for all the time of the series, until 1987 when the series was cancelled.

Meanwhile, Vallejo, also a writer, wrote the script for a short, Pasaron los días, which would be directed by Irina Kuberskaya and debuted in 1985, starring Francisco Rabal and Asunción Balaguer.

After Sésamo, Vallejo's career was far from ended. He found roles in both Vicente Aranda's El Lute: camina o revienta and Pedro Almodóvar's La ley del deseo. At the same time, he would appear in TV series Los mundos de Yupi ("Yupi's world"), which was Televisión Española replacement for Barrio Sésamo. His role in Yupi was that of Astrako, a human-like alien with fake nose and ears which was Yupi's friend and partner while he stayed in this strange world Earth.

Vallejo's career in the early 1990s was scarce, with only mini series Riders of the Dawn (1990) until 1995, where he managed to get roles again, and usually in movies with a certain international projection such as L'Enfant du mal (1995), En dag til i solen (1998) or Plenilune (1999). Quietly, Vallejo's character gained more and more importance in the movies: "Policeman #1", then "Commissioner", then "Landlord", then characters with a name such as "Germán" in Pídele cuentas al rey (1999).

He was luckier on TV than on the big screen: Although he managed to get roles in some big titles such as Pellet (2000) or At Full Gallop (2000), they were usually small roles without name, but in TV series such as ¡Ala... Dina! he became a cast member (not only a guest). In following years, he managed to play some named roles in movies (Manolito Gafotas en ¡Mola ser jefe!, 2001; Sleeping Luck, 2003), and some guest appearances in important series such as El Comisario or Maneras de sobrevivir (where he plays recurrent guest Agapito).

In 2005, Vallejo got another cast role in a TV series, sitcom Agitación + IVA, as the main cast member Antonio Pérez. It is played on tuesdays at midnight, for one hour.

Another script by Vallejo is currently filming: Latidos ("Heartbeats") is directed by Carles Pastor and will be premiered in Spain at some point of current year 2006.