2023-06-20 12:00:00
Javier Portales
“My dad’s last girlfriend took advantage of his illness.” Almost twenty years after the death of Javier Portales, his only son -Javier Ángel- broke the silence about the last years of the brilliant capocomico. And he once again placed life on the media agenda, but especially the last few years, of whom he knew how to conquer immortality thanks to his work in show business, dedicating his entire life to making millions of people laugh. Argentines.
An inseparable companion of Alberto Olmedo, Portales earned his own place as one of the greatest comedians on television and for four decades made an entire country laugh. He enjoyed fame, prestige, popularity and came to earn a lot of money -80 thousand dollars a month- devoting his life to humor. Until one day that life turned into a true ordeal, turning him into a tragic ghost of himself that led him to a deep depression.
“I don’t think that El Negro was in a bad period of his life, he was going through a good moment,” Portales declared in 1988, when he learned that his great friend had just died after falling from a balcony in Mar del Plata. 15 years later, that part of his story that had survived the death of his great friend and co-worker would slowly become extinct until death found him at the age of 66: alone, confined to a wheelchair, with serious problems. financial, but above all exhausted after his last love affair, which ended very badly.
The drama of Javier Portales’s son: “My old man’s last girlfriend took advantage of his illness”
It all started in 1969 when he met Delia Novoa. The woman quickly became her partner and she was a kind of second mother for little Javier Ángel (then seven years old), the actor’s only son. They were married and were together for two and a half decades, until in 1995, in the corridors of a television channel, Portales met a woman 25 years his junior. This is how he began – secretly from his wife – an affair with the screenwriter Marina Gacitúa, who was 33 years old at the time.
The forbidden relationship ended when Delia discovered them shortly after. His ex-wife would initiate a divorce trial that would end in a disastrous agreement for the actor. Two and a half million dollars and a clause in which Portales agreed to give him 17% of what he earned. That would be the preamble of what would come…
But for the actor, his new relationship would not only bring problems with his ex-wife, but also with his son. Javier Ángel did not look favorably on his father’s girlfriend and began to distance himself from him. For many years they couldn’t finish a conversation without a fight.
In 1997, and despite continuing to work on television and theater, Portales complained of severe back pain that was almost unbearable, according to what he told his colleagues. His legs no longer responded as he wanted, and he was getting tired. Five years ago, a home accident had begun to significantly deteriorate his health and his spirits.
At the end of that year, and after several operations on his spine, the comedian traveled to Cuba for the first time to undergo physiotherapy treatment. He little by little he would go on his way. By then he was already living with Marina and the screenwriter’s teenage daughter in his apartment in Caballito.
February 21, 1998, almost two months after his trip to Cuba, is perhaps the day that begins the worst moment in Portales’ life. The actor, who always wrote all the activities he carried out in his diary, made one last note and would never open it again. He gave in to his illness and depression. With many difficulties to move, which prevented her from working, and with problems with his partner, Portales began a long period of seclusion in his house.
Beatriz Salomón, Alberto Olmedo and Javier Portales, in a sketch of No touch button
According to his son, during those months Gacitúa took him out of the main room of the apartment to move him to a service room, with the excuse that he would be more comfortable there. But the real reason for the move -according to Javier Ángel- was because that way Portales’s wife could come and go from the apartment without the actor noticing it, avoiding her questioning. In addition, she had managed to get the actor to sign a general power of attorney over all his assets.
After several hospitalizations in which Portales was on the verge of death, Gacitúa abandoned him and traveled to Spain, where he began a relationship with another man. Suddenly Javier found himself alone, sick and penniless. He didn’t even have the money to pay for private medical coverage.
The actor’s lawyers filed a lawsuit against Marina Gacitúa for abandonment of person. On the other hand, Delia Novoa managed to keep the apartment in the Caballito neighborhood and another apartment in a court ruling.
Miguel Ángel Álvarez, such the real name of Alberto Olmedo’s famous squire, was born in Córdoba on April 21, 1937, but became Javier Portales under the influence of a poet from Santa Fe. He was saying the baroque translation of the artistic name that the man with the last name Álvarez adopted one night in Río Cuarto when he was still a stranger. Then, that omen of good luck that his name contained would become a reality.
Success, fame and money for many years were common currency. Javier Portales did everything: from great playwrights, such as Shakespeare and Chekhov, to his unforgettable humorous duo with Alberto Olmedo.
Such for such: Javier Portales with Alberto Olmedo (Télam)
Becoming a comic actor was not an intellectual dilemma, but rather a combination of intuition and chance that led him to have a popular profile. His career in show business began at the age of 14 doing radio theater in Rosario, a city to which he had moved with his mother after his father’s death. While he was studying, in his spare time he worked in a typewriter workshop until one day he called a woman who immediately fell in love with his voice. That woman was the actress Erika de Boero, who immediately asked the stranger that she was on the other end of the phone if she wanted to do a radio drama, since she had a very particular voice.
A still adolescent Portales began to take his first steps in that fascinating world of theater that he wanted to be a part of so much. At the age of 17, after having worked in various independent theater groups, he felt that Rosario was too young for him and decided to try his luck in Buenos Aires. That would be the origin of a rich and successful career.
He made more than 100 films, interpreted the classics on stage and was the author of The Frying Pan, a remarkable work that was declared compulsory reading at the Conservatory of Dramatic Art. But without a doubt, Javier Portales earned immortality in his work in film, theater and television alongside the great comedians of Argentina.
Today, at the corner of Corrientes and Uruguay avenues, you can see the statues of two men seated in an armchair: they represent Borges and Álvarez, the famous characters that Portales played together with Olmedo in the program No toca botón, a great success in the 80’s.
The statues of Alberto Olmedo and Javier Portales on the mythical Corrientes Street (Photo: Adrián Escándar)
Javier Portales died on October 14, 2003, at the age of 66, as a result of diabetic decompensation in a bed at the Ramos Mejía Hospital. In this way, so sad and lonely, one of the greatest figures of Argentine humor left, who spent his last days alone, confined to a wheelchair and being a tragic ghost of himself, who had nothing to do with that comical image that made thousands of Argentines laugh for four decades in a row.
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