# El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar (1988)

> A Mexican telenovela in which a woman's present-day life is pulled into the past lives and supernatural mysteries of her earlier incarnations.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/18391

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 196
- Episode runtime: 22 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, fantasy
- Created by: Carlos Téllez, Margarita Villaseñor, Carlos Olmos
- Network: Las Estrellas
- Cast: Lucía Méndez, Jorge Martínez, Alejandro Camacho, Adriana Roel, Patricia Reyes Spíndola, Carlos Cámara, Chela Nájera, Fernando Sáenz
- TMDB rating: 8.3/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131166/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: mild
- Tone: melodramatic, earnest, romantic, haunted, emotive

## What critics say

Audiences rate the telenovela as acclaimed for its unusual supernatural storytelling within a traditional soap format.

## Synopsis

El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar (1988-1989) is a Mexican telenovela created by Carlos Téllez, Margarita Villaseñor and Carlos Olmos for Las Estrellas, produced by Televisa. Lucía Méndez plays Diana Salazar and her colonial-era past life Doña Leonor de Santiago, while Jorge Martínez plays Mario Villarreal and his earlier counterpart Don Eduardo Carbajal. Alejandro Camacho appears as Dr. Omar Santelmo, and Adriana Roel as Delfina García vda. de Salazar anchors the family's older generation. The engine of the series is a woman whose present-day life keeps slipping into the memories of a past life, with romance, betrayal and the threat of persecution pressing against each episode. Told across a single run of 196 episodes of roughly twenty-two minutes each, it is a long-form serialized soap with a continuing story rather than a case of the week. Set in Mexico with flashbacks to colonial New Spain, it blends the emotional excess of melodrama with unusual supernatural material. Its tone is earnest and romantic, with a haunted atmosphere that will appeal to fans of reincarnation romance and gothic soap operas, in the spirit of Dark Shadows and Pasión de gavilanes.

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