I shall not be moved
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You don't alter your name from Alfredo Alvarez to Elfrid Walkingtree
without having a pretty strong idea of yourself. Even if you say, half-joking:
"My theory, actually, is that I'm an intergalactic princess exiled
on planet Earth."
Elfrid, now 41, is not just Spanish. He's Asturian. The Asturians are
the Welsh of Spain: a gritty, Celtic-influenced mountain people. A saying
goes "To be Spanish is to be privileged: to be Asturian is to be
entitled".
"All my life," says Elfrid, "people have told me to go
one way and I have gone the other."
The son of a bar owner from a mining village, he last did what
Photos: Nikki Kastner
anyone else wanted when he went to a seminary at the age of 12, to become a missionary. He left the seminary at 16 "because I fell too much in love with the world," telling his parents he was enrolling in a language school. In reality he was training as an actor and director. When they discovered and withdrew their support, he worked in a slaughterhouse for a year to finance his course.
He spent his twenties leading a bohemian existence around Spain and the
