Mystery Solved.

This one has been bugging me for years. As a child of the 70's, I was of the fortunate generation to have been reared by the best TV shows. Partridge Family to Gilligan, Brady Bunch to Magic Garden, all classics, and I'm sure still stand up well with the 5-8 crowd. Anyway, apart from all the other shows we all know and love, there has been this one that has been bugging me for years that I couldn't remember the name of. What I remember is that in the mid-70's it came on really early on Saturday mornings; I mean nobody else in the house is awake and you had to sneak downstairs to watch kinda early. The show was a Spanish and English mix of some sort, and had a Mexican village theme. I remember the opening had fly-by of a Mexican village, and for some reason I picture a ferris wheel - but, I'm not sure how that ties into the Mexican theme (are ferris wheels popular in small Mexican villages?). And, there was this theme song that occasionally pops into my head - not the whole song, just this "la la la la la la la la la la la la la" part. I finally gave a good search in Google, trying all permutations of "saturday morning spanish tv show" for the search terms, and finally got it.

It was called "Villa Alegre". Strangely, nothing of it on Youtube. And, not much more anywhere else. But, I did find the theme song. I'll warn you now about the "la la la ..." part. It's going to stick in your head the rest of the day. Only now I realize if I had remembered just the next two words after the la-la's I would have solved this years ago...

Here's the link to a myspace page dedicated to the show: Villa Alegre

I really don't recall much about the show at all, so the pictures on the myspace page don't ring a bell for me. And, the show was no where near the caliber of the other Saturday morning staples (say Land of the Lost or Superfriends) as evidenced by it's early morning time slot and the number of websites dedicated to it having ever existed (one). But, I'm happy at the moment to have solved a mystery which has been chewing up brain cells for years.