Five years without a single filmed project. A house in Los Angeles that has to be rented out. A move to a smaller flat because the savings are running out. And a video sent to a Spanish television station with a sentence you rarely hear from a man who was once among the highest-paid actors on television: „I am available for you, family. I am available.”

Cuban actor Mario Cimarro, the face of Juan Reyes in „Passion of the Hawks”, has publicly asked for work in Spain. He sent the video to the programme „El verano se mueve” on Telecinco, and posted a message on his own profile too. He is not asking for a role, not for a project - he is asking for work.

The reason he gives is heavier than the request itself. Cimarro claims there is a blacklist at the major production houses in the US and Latin America that stops him from working. „Telemundo does not let me work anywhere. I am banned by them. I cannot work in their productions, but they also do not allow managers and agents to find me work elsewhere, like Televisa or any other Mexican production,” he said. He adds that he cannot work in Miami now either.

If that is true, then this is not an actor who has gone out of fashion. This is a man shut out of the market by an arrangement between houses that are competitors to each other. Does such a list formally exist? Nobody will confirm it - and that is the entire point of a blacklist.

An industry that does not fire you, it just stops calling

What makes this story different from the usual statements by actors in a crisis is how concrete it is. The programme reported that Cimarro had to rent out his house in Los Angeles and move into a smaller flat. That is not a metaphor for hard times, that is a bill that does not get paid.

And in the same period the actor is going through a divorce. His separation from Slovak model Bronislava Gregusova was confirmed two days earlier and ends an eight-year relationship from which they have a daughter. The two things together - no income and no home he used to be in - explain the tone of the video better than any sentence inside it.

Why this story is not as distant as it looks

„Passion of the Hawks” was watched here too. Not as art, but as ritual - the series was part of a household's daily schedule. The face from that series is today asking for work via video.

There is something honest in Cimarro choosing not to pretend. Plenty of actors in the same situation talk about „a new phase” and „projects in development”. He said he has no work and that he needs it. That takes more courage than any role.

Will Spain answer? That will show whether the market really works the way it claims - on talent and recognition - or the way all markets work when nobody is watching.