Spanish actor Alfredo Landa dies

Madrid: Actor Alfredo Landa, one of the best-known faces in Spanish film and the creator of a genre known as `landismo`, died Thursday in Madrid, sources at the Spanish Film Academy told EFE. He was 80.

Retired from public life since 2008 and in unstable health, which had generated much public speculation, Landa was being cared for at a nursing home near his Madrid home. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia and Crown Prince Felipe and his wife, Princess Letizia, sent messages of condolence to Landa`s widow. Born March 3, 1933, in the northern city of Pamplona, he appeared in more than 100 films, some of them light comedies that gave rise to "landismo", but he also portrayed memorable characters, including the father of a peasant family, Paco "El Bajo", in "The Holy Innocents", which won him the Palma de Oro prize for Best Actor at Cannes. Landa won 3 Goya awards, Spain`s equivalent of the Oscars. IANS