María Belén Esteban Menéndez is a Spanish television personality. She has appeared in various programmes including the long-running Sálvame, a show which has been characterised as junk TV. She is known as "La princesa del pueblo" and as "La de San Blas".
Early fame
She rose to prominence as a celebrity in 1999 when she ended her relationship with popular bullfighter, with whom she has a daughter, Andrea Janeiro Esteban. She began her television career on the Spanish channel Antena 3. In 2004 she followed TV presenterAna Rosa Quintana to Telecinco.
''Sálvame''
In 2009 Esteban left El programa de Ana Rosa to participate in a new Telecinco show called Sálvame. Although the show has changed its format over the years, as of 2019, it continues to feature Esteban. Sálvame, which is mainly a talk show about the private lives of celebrities, has attracted a large audience. The celebrities discussed include the show's panelists, or colaboradores to use the Spanish term, and thus the show has a self-referential aspect. The intrusive nature of some material has attracted criticism. One complaint regarded the coverage of Esteban's own daughter Andrea, a minor at the time, who had been discussed in the context of custody issues and her culinary preferences. The matter was addressed by the "defensor del menor", a children's ombudsman, who recommended less coverage of Andrea.
At the end of 2009, Esteban underwent cosmetic surgery ahead of her appearance on Telecinco's New Year's Eve special: Google revealed a massive increase in searches for her on the internet. Her other TV appearances include ¡Más que baile!, where she was the winner in 2010, and Gran Hermano VIP, which she also won in 2015. In 2011 she appeared in a cameo role in , a 3-D film in the Torrente series. She has been credited with creating a number of catchphrases that have gone viral and become part of the Spanish lexicon. One of her most popular ones, "Hasta luego, Mari Carmen", has the English equivalent of the "Bye, Felicia" from the Ice Cube movie Friday, and would be said to someone you do not expect or hope to see again. The phrase has also become an Internet meme in Spain in its own right.
