Dolores Madrigal

This week, my passion post will be about Dolores Madrigal. Dolores is the daughter of Pepa and Felix Madrigal and the older sister of Antonio and Camilo Madrigal. Dolores’ power is impeccable hearing. In the song The Family Madrigal, Mirabel sings “Cousin Dolores can hear a pin drop.” She uses her powers to both her and her family’s advantage to eavesdrop on the other people of the town. Further on in this song, Mirabel says “My cousin Dolores can hear this whole chorus a mile away.”

After Antonio’s coming of age ceremony, they are having lunch at the table and Abuela says that Mariano wanted to propose to Isabela, then turns and asks Dolores if they have a date yet. Dolores pauses for a second, and you can clearly see that she is listening to something before she announces “Tonight. He wants five kids.” Dolores is a great character and the power that she has is astounding, however, Dolores is one of the few characters in this movie that I do not like.

The reason that I do not like her, some would say is petty, but I do not care, I just cannot stand her. The reason that I can’t is actually very simple. She is shiesty. Her power is the impeccable hearing that she has means that she can hear absolutely any and everything. In my post about Bruno, I stated that he was living in the walls of his family home since the day that he “disappeared” and ran away from the family. Since he was living so close and Dolores has amazing hearing, this means that there is no way that she was not able to hear him.

Dolores knew that Bruno was living in the walls of the house, and yet she kept his secret for years. However, when Mirabel has a secret and she finds out why Bruno left, the vision that caused him to leave, and that she was at the center of it, Dolores immediately told the entire family. Many people will say that it is just because she cannot keep a secret, however, this just simply can’t be true because she was able to keep Bruno’s secret for an extended amount of years, and nobody but her knew that he was living in the walls.

In truth, I think that Dolores just did not like Mirabel, and I also believe that she was an extreme gossiper. She jumped at the chance to tell Mirabel that her sister Luisa was anxious about something because she heard her eye twitching the entire night. She also jumped at the chance to tell a group of very excited kids that Mirabel was the only one in the family that did not have a gift.

Combining these two things together, with Dolores only not being able to keep secrets that were Mirabel’s secrets, I am truly a firm believer in the fact that Dolores just did not like Mirabel and she was an extreme gossip, but only when it came to her. For this reason, I do not like Dolores. She was an okay character, but these were her falling moments in the film.