Journalist and presenter Jesús Quintero died this Monday at the age of 82 at the Nuestra Señora de los Remedios de Ubrique residence in Cádiz. As ABC reported and family sources confirmed to EL PAÍS, Quintero died while he was taking a nap.
The journalist from San Juan del Puerto (Huelva), better known as El loco de la Colina (the name of one of his iconic programs), was one of the most renowned interviewers in Spain and, with more than 200 awards, one of the most distinguished awards to his credit. His career earned him two Ondas Awards, a Golden Antenna, the Andalusian Medal and the King of Spain Journalism Award. Very popular in the 80’s and 90’s thanks to his radio and television shows, his particular way of interviewing created a school, with conversations full of silence that impregnated the conversation with a mysterious and intimate tone. More than 500 popular and unknown characters have been the subject of his questions throughout his long career.
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Although he took his first professional steps as an actor, he soon directed his career towards the media, joining Radio Popular in Huelva. As an artist representative, he introduced the guitarist Paco de Lucía and guided the careers of personalities such as Soledad Bravo, the clowns Gaby, Fofó and Miliki, María Jiménez or the Colombian singer Negra Grande. In the 1960s, through opposition, he joined Radio Nacional de España in Huelva. There he produced programs such as Estudio 15.18, Ciudades and El hombre de la roulotte, in which he was already beginning to develop his particular style.
A few years later El loco de la Colina was added, a space born as a night program on Radio Nacional de España, where it was broadcast between 1980 and 1982 to later go to Cadena SER until 1986. His fame made him heard from even on radio stations from Argentina and Uruguay. With him, Quintero refined his style of remaining silent after the interviewee’s response, sometimes causing the guest discomfort or an unexpected response beyond what the guest might have previously prepared.
In 1986, a hypochondriac depressive neurosis led him to give up radio. During his retirement he received offers to present El loco de la Colina in Mexico and Argentina. He also founded the radio station Radio Romantica, which began broadcasting in Seville in 1988. A month later it was closed due to lack of a license.
In 1988 his next talk show, El perro verde, premiered, in this case for TVE. Once again it was a success with an audience that traveled throughout the Latin American world. In 1990 the show What Nobody Knows was released, also for public television.
On Antena 3 and in programs such as Thirteen Nights or La Boca del Lobo, he interviewed controversial figures of the moment such as Mario Conde, Jesús Gil or the Duke of Feria, Rafael Medina, who took part in the program that coincided with the start of the trial because of Kidnapping and corruption of minors In the 1990s he was a pioneer in formats such as La noche americana, El lobo estepario, Cuerda de presos or El vagamundo. Already in the 2000s he presented Ratones coloraos on Canal Sur and La Noche de Quintero, with which he returned to TVE in 2007. He was always against the so-called trash TV. In 2007 he told EL PAÍS: “People are not garbage. There are those who turn them into garbage. With the same, an architect makes aluche [barrio obrero de Madrid] and another the Alhambra”. In fact, his words against entertainment journalism regularly trend on Twitter.
Not only prominent personalities went through their microphones. He also interviewed unknown characters who occasionally became famous thanks to Quintero. Such was the case of Juan Joya Borja, better known as El Risitas, who took part in El Vagamundo for the first time in 1999, telling anecdotes in a humorous tone and later joined by his friend Antonio Rivero Crespo. His catchy laugh even made him an internationally known meme.
After gaining fame, the journalist has endured a number of hardships in recent years. In 2016, transcripts of the summary of the Ausbanc case showed that his daughters had sued him for failing to pay for his college tuition and asking for help so his property would not be confiscated because he had no money or work, in addition to that that he had asked His most valuable property, the attic where he lived in Seville, is for sale for 1.3 million euros. In early 2018, he was evicted from the Seville theater that bore his name for failing to pay the rent for more than two and a half years.
In mid-September 2022, his failing health prompted him to enter the Residencia de Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in the town of Ubrique, Cádiz, to receive the daily treatment he needed for his recovery, the journalist’s family reported at the time. He died in the same apartment this Monday.
After learning of his death, there were numerous reactions. Politicians and journalists have lamented the death of a “teacher” and “standard of television journalism”. the governor, Pedro Sanchez, He sent his condolences to the family on Twitter and remembered the journalist as “a benchmark on TV for his personality, his great interviews and his way of understanding communication”. The Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, also reminded the interviewer, “one of the icons of journalism in this country”, who she emphasized for having “reinvented the way of doing things and dealing with people”.
The President of the Junta de Andalucía, Juanma Morenorecalled on Twitter the Andalusian medal received by the journalist, which, according to him, “has raised the genre of the interview with the mastery of words, silence and his own style”. Paul EcheniqueAlso Quintero, speaker of the Podemos parliamentary group, has fired Quintero on the same social network: “May the earth be easy on you, Master Jesús Quintero.” Inés Arrimadas, leader of Ciudadanos, has described him as “unclassifiable” and “free” and assures that “he will always have a place in the collective memory of the Spaniards” because “he has put his own stamp on all his radio programs and TELEVISION”. “There has never been such a sane madman,” said the spokesman for the Esquerra Republicana in Congress, Gabriel Rufián. The journalist Jesús Cintora has called him “a benchmark for television journalism”. A journalist, Rosa María Artal, has also affirmed that “she has transformed night radio, filling it with beauty and warmth”.
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