On Wednesday, January 29, the ordinary plenary session of the Municipal Corporation of Lebrija City Council, at the proposal of Mayor José Benito Barroso, the initial approval of the granting of the honorary title of Favorite Son of the City of Lebrija to Manuel Valencia Carrasco “Manuel de Paula”.
Manuel Valencia Carrasco, Manuel de Paula, was born in Lebrija in 1956. He is the penultimate of the six children born from the marriage formed by Manuel the Caneco y Anna de Paula (or Ana from Rumbilla).
Following in his cousin's footsteps Curro Malena, would be his uncle The Paula who took him to the Mairena del Alcor competition on August 6, 1971. He was only 14 years old and left everyone enthralled with seguiriyas, with which the precocious child won the 15.000 pesetas of the first prize of the competition. The next day he would be baptized by the remembered Mario Fuentes Aguilar like Manuel de Paula, because his maternal family called them the Paulas.
And his life changes completely. He enters the world of festivals, gains respect in competitions and makes his debut in the discography with El cante big of a gypsy boy (1972), with the guitar of Melchor de Marchena, which would be followed Gypsy party (1973) and young field (1975) con Pedro Bacán, just the year in which he debuted in the Lebrijana Snail, in addition to appearing in the film Manuela (1976) of Gonzalo Garcia Pelayo, continuing with the double album Romance of Manuel Justicia (1976), his most ambitious work with lyrics by the journalist Antonio Atienza and guitars of Pedro Peña and Pedro Bacán, and perhaps encouraged by the role of Juan Bernabe and coordinated by Mario Fuentes Aguilar, closely linked to Bernabé's Lebrijano Theatre.
The recordings follow one another, as This is how Manuel de Paula sings today (1978) o Manuel de Paula (1979), the year in which Mario Maya heard him in Seville and incorporated him into his company, a teacher with whom he became an artist and in whose cast he was for eight years touring stages around the world, time in which he appeared in the short film Cante Gypsy.
In 2019 he was appointed Golden Snail from the 54th Lebrijana Caracolá.
