Jesús Quintero, the man who loved nobodies | The Spanish owned a unique style

The voice of Andalusian with rebellious curls It reached the last row of the Lope de Vega theater in Seville. So he acted and still wasn’t nicknamed The fool on the Hill, as one of its most emblematic programs. His rebellion was class; I wanted to look and hear the forgotten ones, the marginal, the anonymous, the oppressed, those nobodies who are usually as ignored as they are made invisible. He was the “poor kid” who became a well-known journalist and presenter. The cloud of smoke from his cigarette gave a touch of greater intimacy and mystery to those interviews that seemed like a master class in journalism and psychoanalysis because of the way he worked with silences, with the unsaid. Spanish journalist Jesús Quintero he died this monday at the age of 82 in the geriatric residence Nuestra Señora de los Remedios. Sources close to his family confirmed that the legendary communicator had lunch for the last time, then went to rest and did not wake up.

There were no miracles in the life of Manuel de Jesus Rodriguez Quintero. He was born on August 19, 1940 in San Juan del Puerto, in the province of Huelva. His father was an electrician and his mother, a farmer. She used to tell her son that he was “weirder than a green dog and a red mouse.” She did not know, the mother, that she was serving her the future name of two programs on a platter. Like someone who dribbles a prefigured destiny -to continue his father’s trade or to work as a worker-, the young man was stung by the desire of the acting. But at the end of a performance at the Lope de Vega theater in Seville, a man from the radio, the journalist rafael santiestebanvery impressed by the voice of that budding actor, came over to tell him he could do radio.

He began his radio career in the 1960s in National Radio of Spain, animating the afternoons with the program Studio 15-18. The program was insufficient for him; she wanted something else. Then he proposed to the directors The Man in the Caravanwhich consisted of touring the country in a van full of books and pans interviewing the “nobodies”, people without fame but with history, anonymous characters with an interesting life.

He believed in the word (and silence) as a means of communication. He preferred the radio because it is “more truth than television”. He classified the silences: that of two people who had (and do not have) anything to say and those who know that silence can be surprise and rapprochement. The madman on the hilla was born as a nightly radio program on Radio Nacional de España (1980 to 1982) and later went to the Being Chain (1986); the program was also broadcast in Uruguay and Argentina.

The pace was leisurely; that radio animal, with a deep gaze and silences that could cause irritation, discomfort and even perplexity it was a kind of great ear that knew how to listen to the problems of the desperate and lonely. Behind that voice that was heard even in the last room of the pension were the scripts by Raúl del Pozo and Javier Salvago. If the journalist, announcer and presenter was not one hundred percent owner of his words, he was of that style that implied that he remained for a while without saying anything. Silent. A silence that could increase fascination or provoke objection without half measures.

the fool on the Hill broke audience records with nearly a million listeners. up to the magazine People dealt with the phenomenon and spoke with the journalist who declared then that the program was “his nocturnal occupational therapy”, that “he clung to the microphone like a castaway”, as “someone who looked at the stars without forgetting what happened to others in the earth”. Jesus wanted the interviewee to tell him his things. “I’m not going to harass him, or suck him, or beat him. I never use the lunge. If he is to die he will kill himself and with his own words. I don’t believe anything in this fashion of aggressive reporting”, He explained and clarified: “If you stand against the interviewee, you lose him. If you arrive arrogant, too. If you arrive very humble, it defeats you. You have to tell him without words ‘You are who you are… but I’m not a fool’”.

The shadows overshadow the light side. A hypochondriacal depressive neurosis put on pause, in 1986, the career of the Andalusian with the rebellious curls and the silences that embrace without words. In that retirement period created the station Romantic Radio, which was later closed for lack of a license. Two years later she returned to the ring with the green dogwhich premiered at the TVE (Spanish Television) in 1988. The success continued and led him to travel to Mexico, Argentina –the show aired on ATC in 1989- and Uruguay. On Spanish public television he also did Nobody knows (1990) and on Antena 3 the cycles thirteen nights o the mouth of the wolf. In the 90s they would arrive the american night, Steppe wolf –he did in Buenos Aires, on Radio Millenium in 1998-, prisoners rope y The wanderer. In the 2000s she presented red mice y Quintero’s nighta program with which he returned to TVE in 2007.

In the green dog mixed famous and unknown. How not to remember the white and shaggy dog ​​that accompanied him in the study and stayed all the time lying on the floor? Jesus loved the “nobodies”; they were his favorite interviewees. Some will remember the man who didn’t answer any of his questions because he eventually turned out to be mute. EITHER the conversation with the 11 beggars, during a dinner. Among his most remembered interviews, the ones he did to Diego Maradona, Jorge Luis Borges, Eduardo Galeano, Subcomandante Marcos, Antonio Escohotado, Facundo Cabral, Felipe González, Baltasar Garzón, Pepe Mujica, Joaquín Sabina and Arturo Pérez-Reverte. In 1999, for the cycle that had TV Blueinterviewed the then president Carlos Saul Menem, to whom he asked: “Have you ever been a Muslim? ‘No – answered Menem – I was always Catholic, apostolic, from La Rioja… I mean, Roman’. When he interviewed Robledo Puch in the Sierra Chica prison, the Jackal told him excitedly: “Ah! the fool on the Hill?”.

The best creator of atmospheres (radio and television) confessed that they called him crazy because never had a practical sense of life. “They call me crazy because I still believe in big dreams, in utopias… And because I do not give up happiness. I do not understand those who are willing to do anything to achieve power, wealth or fame. Antonio Banderas told me: ‘Fame is a rumor six meters away’. He was right,” Jesus recalled in an interview with The Spanish in February 2020. Being a good communicator does not imply being a good administrator. He tried to have a production company with which he made money, but lost more due to bad businessIn addition to leading a life bohemia. He also managed the Quintero Theater, where he programmed theater and music shows. To pay his debts he sold his house. “I’ve been bankrupt three or four times in my life. If I don’t work, under the roofs, under the level. I live with what is fair. I will never be a nouveau riche. I will always be a poor old man.”

The Andalusian with the rebellious curls was some kind of detective who wanted what was hidden to be revealed. The man who died in his sleep was the companion of hundreds of nocturnal castaways enraptured with that madman who breathed words and exhaled silences.

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