Jesús Quintero, the art of communication

They tell me that Jesús Quintero has died, and I don't believe it.

He thought that he too would come out of this, as he had come out of so many other fatal heart attacks, almost as if nothing had happened.

I imagined him immortal, and not just figuratively.

In the thirty years that we were working side by side, I never imagined him dead.

Perhaps because he ignored death —except in the program dedicated to death,

with Antonio Gala, I rarely heard him talk about it— in the same way that death seemed to ignore him, until now.

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Journalist Jesús Quintero dies at the age of 82

The last time we spoke on the phone, a couple of months ago, already ailing and with pneumonia problems, he was talking to me about future projects, he was always thinking about the programs that we still had to do.

I told him “Jesus, you are eighty-two years old, and I am ten less, and our neurons are already slipping…”.

But he was still unattainable to discouragement thinking about new-old programs, as if he still had the best to do.

And that gives an idea of ​​the character.

Because the most important thing for Jesus was his work, his archive, his work.

It was only him entirely when he stood in front of a microphone or a camera to play himself — he recognized himself as a frustrated actor — playing Loco de la hill, Perro verde, Lobo estepario or Ratón colorao.

Jesús Quintero was his best self, his best self, when he got into the skin of the Loco de la Colina, which is what he was, is and will always be: the Fool.

A madman who did not do crazy things.

The madness was left to Quintero.

El Loco was what Quintero always wanted to be, a pure Quintero, free of straw and dust.

Outside of the Hill and outside of his character, Jesús Quintero could be a disaster, he even went bankrupt three times.

But in his real thing, communication, he was a genius.

He wasn't the best of his kind, he was unique.

You could parody him (and in fact they parodied him many times), but you couldn't imitate him (although they also tried to sometimes) because to do what Jesús Quintero did you had to be Jesús Quintero, have lived what he had lived, having socialized with the people with whom he had socialized,

Quintero was really what his image reflected, a bohemian, a dreamer and all those things that the many songs dedicated to him said about him, from Los Romeros de la Puebla to El Barrio or Joaquín Sabina.

Who has seen a journalist to whom they dedicate songs... But Quintero was not a journalist or a communicator to use.

He was an artist, a communication artist.

His aspiration was to make radio and television an art.

He considered his `his programs as films or as plays.

They had to have atmosphere, rhythm, measure, silences, climate and climax.

That is why he surrounded himself with prestigious artists, poets, film directors and illuminators.

He wasn't content with things being okay.

He aspired to perfection, although he did not achieve it because perfection is deceitful and elusive.

Like Federico García Lorca who invented a world that did not exist before him, the Lorca world, or like Federico Fellini who invented the Fellinian world, Quintero also created his own world, the Quinterian world, full of Quinterian characters, Quinterian questions and quinterian silences.

Quintero was what he liked to say about his beloved Beni de Cádiz or Lola Flores, an end of the race.

With him dies a very particular way of understanding communication and life.

With him dies that natural gift he had to make himself heard.

It was enough for him to open his mouth for people to pay attention.

To make himself heard and to listen, which was perhaps the secret for his characters to open up to him when he interviewed them.

Nobody has managed to disarm an interviewee as Quintero disarmed him without the slightest hint of aggressiveness, only with a complicit smile and silence.

He, who made silence an art, has just entered the longest silence, the eternal silence, although here young people will continue to discover him on the internet and will continue to be amazed by that

, wrapped in cigarette smoke, who said those things, kept those silences and he laughed with that laugh so his own: ha, ha, ha...

Javier Salvago

is a poet and screenwriter.

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