Romina Power says her daughter Ylenia is still alive because she hasn't "felt" that she has died.

BarcelonaRomina Power's 74 years have been eventful. Famous from birth as the daughter of two Hollywood icons, Tyrone Power and Linda Christian, her life has been fodder for gossip columns since the beginning of time. But if her birthright didn't exactly help her lead a discreet life, neither has the path she has forged herself. A prime example is the relationship she began when she was just 15 (in 1967) with the Italian singer-songwriter Al Bano—ten years her senior—whom she met during the filming of the movie Nel solein which she was the female lead. Three years later, when she turned eighteen, the couple married in Cellino San Marco, the town in Apulia where he lived, and that same year their first daughter, Ylenia Carrisi, was born.

This is the starting point of the memoirs of a singular artist with a tumultuous life marked by the disappearance of her eldest daughter, who vanished in 1994 in New Orleans. This event defined an era for the tabloids and, as is typical with disappearances, never truly ended. The sensationalist press didn't help matters, seeing every headline about Ylenia as an opportunity to cash in. Nor did her parents' endless, televised hope that their firstborn would reappear. Unmitigated hope in Romina's case, and more complex in Al Bano's case, who, although he says he believes she is alive, was the one who asked the Italian justice system to declare her legally dead, which he finally achieved in 2014.

A special date

This week, Power has published Think deeply, simplicio. The alphabet of my life –which can be translated into Catalan as Profoundly simple thoughts. The alphabet of my life.A book that doesn't shy away from any controversial element. Romina has chosen the date of Ylenia's birth, who would have turned 55 this week, as the publication date for her autobiography. And indeed, her tireless search for her daughter has been the driving force behind her. leitmotiv Romina's daughter, Ylenia, has been missing since her disappearance. "November is the month Ylenia was born. She disappeared in the United States in January 1994. She was 23 years old. I have never lost hope of hugging her again. I know she will have changed since then, but if anyone recognizes a woman who looks like that girl, please contact me," she wrote on her Instagram account in 2019, the 25th anniversary of her daughter's disappearance, whose body has never been found.

Now he dedicates a good part of his book to discussing this issue because "the time has come" to give his "version" of everything that has happened to him in his life, which has always generated so much anticipation. In a promotional interview for his memoirs, which he has given to Corriere della SeraHe criticized how the press handled the issue. "In Milan there was a newspaper called La NotteIt had a huge headline on the front page: Ylenia has died“Without proof, without anything. How must a hopeful mother feel?” Power asks. “They also said we were hiding Ylenia at home just to get publicity. Not to mention other false stories about my daughter: that she was doing drugs or that she had decided to throw herself into the Mississippi River. But Ylenia was curious, bright, and only one exam away from graduating from King’s College. And she knew how to swim. I never believed the story of the aquarium keeper who claimed to have seen her: his description wasn’t reliable,” adds the artist, who had three other children with Al Bano, with whom he formed one of Europe’s most successful duos for years thanks to their legendary hit. Felicitano.

The finger on the wound

She's right to criticize much of the press because the stories published about Ylenia were numerous, and some were quite surreal and insensitive. The couple last heard their daughter's voice on the phone on January 1, 1994. Ylenia was in New Orleans at the time, where she had gone to write a book about a local singer. That's where the available information ended, and the press began its speculations, most of which have never been confirmed. For example, that Ylenia had become addicted to drugs and had committed suicide by jumping into the Mississippi. This is perhaps the theory that most resonated with the public, but there were others, such as that she had entered a witness protection program and, therefore, had changed her name and substantially altered her appearance.

In 2011, new ideas on the subject were still appearing: the German weekly Freizet Reuve She claimed she was in a cloistered convent. Lydia Lozano's vehement defense of her theory on Telecinco, which she championed for weeks, caused quite a stir in Spain. She claimed Ylenia was alive and living in the Dominican Republic with a family. Ultimately, Lozano was never able to prove her theory, and the network ended up organizing a special program to force the journalist to apologize. Of that media spectacle, perhaps what bothered the missing girl's parents most was the way it was handled, more than the substance, since Romina continues to maintain in her memoirs that her daughter is not dead. "A mother carries an invisible umbilical cord with her children even after giving birth: if Ylenia had died, I would have heard it. We need a foundation for missing girls, to show them that we haven't forgotten them, that we continue to hope to see them again, and that we have never stopped loving them or searching for them."

Not everything the artist said was critical; he also expressed gratitude to some of the figures who supported him. For example, Sophia Loren: "I can't forget her call. She started crying; she was like a mother to me." He also recalls the interview they gave when they learned of the disappearance: "We stayed in New Orleans for almost a month, and then Al Bano insisted on coming back because he had work commitments." He also speaks of Ylenia in relation to Yari, the son they had after her. "Ylenia and Yari were very close. She went back to Louisiana several times to look for clues. When they were little, we always took the children on tour. In Spain, in the summer, we sometimes slept under the stars because there wasn't room in the hotels," he reflects aloud, like a mother who refuses to lose hope.