Villa Alegre

I Know I'm Late But up 'til now almost every comment that was made regarding this show (thought I was crazy, thought I was the only one, asked everyone, searched every where...etc) applied to me. I am an African American man from the Lower Eastside of Manhattan and no one in my family nor any of my friends remember this show, not even my Puerto Rican ex-wife. For the past 11 years I've been thinking this and many other shows from my childhood and everything else I've found on the internet (and people remembered) but this show, I was starting to think, was all in my head. It is such a relief to see that this was a real show and I'm not crazy, and for the record, I too thought it was Vi Alerge and all I could remember was the opening theme song, "La lalala lala lala la lala La Vi Alegre" YOU GUYS HAVE KNOW IDEA HOW GREAT IT FEELS TO MAKE THIS CONNECTION, THANX!!!

My uncle was the guitar player of the show. Most of the songs he played them, and he was the guy that came out with a guitar to teach the kids a song. I watched the show all the time. Living in Brooklyn, NY it helped me learn about my culture. I remember my uncle came one day to visit us and he gave us the LP of Villa Alegre with all the songs. I remember it had the songs written in the back and all my cousins had the same LP too.

My mother still has it, with the songs written in the back. I remember "Mi hogar es en la Tierra..." as one of my favorite songs. My uncle Cheo Montalvo, died in 1995 and is now buried in Sabana Grande, PR. I have difficulties finding the original shows though. Would like to buy the collection. If anyone knows, it would be great to see the show again to see my uncle.

It's always amazing to me to find others have actually seen this show because, like the writer of the above comment, I never found anything on it on the web. Not even YouTube has any clips :( I loved this show and have very fond early childhood memories of the opening credits with the miniature amusement park/fair rides. The theme song still sticks in my head every time I say or type the show's title. I wonder why it's so hard to find footage of this show if other 70's shows were recorded. I just went on YouTube and found clips of every 70's children show I could think of. There are even multiple pages of clips from another favorite of mine, "Vegetable Soup" - also a diversity-themed children's show from that seemingly Utopian time of creativity in that arena.

For about 20 years no one I talked to could tell me the name of this spanish show that came on PBS untill I posted the question at The Toonarific Archive.Within a day ,a fellow user gave me a link to Yesterdayland that told about the show and how it was railroaded off the air by THE CHILDRENS TELEVISION WORK SHOP OF ALL COMPANIES!! Turns out,they didnt want ANY competition for the spanish speaking public so they sought to have their funding removed.Eventually they won in 1980 and the show was cancelled.There was also some bickering as to which of the spanish speaking comunities would have the greatest influence(Cuban,Mexican,S.American,Spanish,).It really bothered me to hear about the troubles behind the scenes that the show had.Shame on you Big Bird!

My sister and I used to watch this show on our PBS station. It followed "The Electric Company" and had "ZOOM" (our favorite) right after it...so we kinda had to watch it. Odd how we actually sat through it, learning Spanish and all. I remember the beginning vividly. It had sort of a paper maché rotating carnival with a spinning ferris wheel, and then fireworks came shooting out of it. If I recall correctly, the first half of the show was in English, then it repeated the whole show in Spanish. I remember there being a village, where people interacted with each other, and little vignettes where the would explore different things. I remember one of them being where popcorn came from. This is an early memory, so it would have to be in the early 70's when we watched it. Would love to see a compilation on DVD.