When I was studying journalism at university (many years ago, unfortunately), Jesús Quintero was already a legend on the airwaves . I remember my Radio teacher playing us recorded tapes in class of those interviews – choppy, sinuous and vaporous – that Quintero did in his first star program, El loco de la Colina , broadcast at first on RNE and then on SER.
His specialty was silences . He would ask a question (sometimes not even that, just a simple comment) and let the interviewee answer. When he finished his answer, he kept silence in the ether – like the suspended smoke he expelled from his cigarette (back then you could smoke both on the radio and on TV) – for a few seconds that seemed endless.
Such was the tension that was breathed in the study, that the interviewee chose to go on and on talking , just to break that discomfort, to turn the interview into a kind of interior monologue. With this simple but effective method (almost Stasi interrogation), he obtained intimate and sentimental confessions, a genre in itself.
Of all the programs he did on television in the 1990s ( The Green Dog, The Wolf’s Mouth, What Does Nobody Know ), my favorite was always Cuerda de Presos . For a couple of superb seasons, he toured the worst prisons in the country, speaking with murderers, robbers, rapists or simple common prisoners in a face-to-face meeting as intimate as it was distressing.
Chilling and unforgettable was the conversation he had with Rafi Escobedo (the only defendant tried and convicted of the popular crime of the Marquises of Urquijo) in July 1988, in the humid and icy Dueso prison (Cantabria), just three days before that Escobedo himself appeared hanged in his cell (an alleged suicide, never fully clarified, which would leave Quintero very touched).
His way of speaking and expressing himself had much of the best Andalusian rhetoric, pompous and theatrical , enjoying singing and declaiming, as if he were the protagonist of a play by the Álvarez Quintero brothers (no, they were not distant relatives). He also dressed in a dandy style, influenced by the expensive tastes of Antonio Gala (with whom he collaborated on numerous occasions), protecting his throat with exclusive Tuscan silk scarves and pastel colors.
As happened with Xavier Sardà, he made the leap from radio to television – El vagamundo, Ratones colorados – to become a mainstream product (as they say now), less prestigious professionally, but much more popular in the ratings .
He decided then to surround himself with the old Spain of the picaresque and bohemian , discovering among the puddles of wine in the taverns characters like El Risitas and his brother – in – law El Peíto , immortal beings of that Spain that he portrayed centuries ago El buscón de Quevedo or Velázquez’s paintings of buffoons.
Quintero made a lot of money on TV, but as a good hustler he squandered it unceremoniously , in a toast to that sun that rises every morning and sets every day. Badly planned businesses, a capricious way of life or the need to maintain a character that had already devoured the person.
In recent months, the pink press – rogue and forgetful – speculated on his economic situation and his poor health. Yesterday he left us at the age of 82 after several years of withdrawal and silence , like a soldier who is getting lost on the horizon of battle.
Honor and glory to Jesús Quintero, teacher of an entire generation.
