Jesús Quintero, genius of silence on radio and television, dies

Jesús Quintero, the legendary presenter of The fool on the Hill and other successful formats on radio and television in which he weaved with unique art questions and silences before which his interviewees were hypnotized with confessions with a maximum degree of sincerity and complicity, has died in Ubrique (Cádiz) at the age of 82. age.

Born on August 18, 1940 in San Juan del Puerto (Huelva), Quintero began his career in the sixties, after obtaining a position by competitive examination at the Southern Broadcasting Center of Spanish National Radio.

In 1982, he put the program on RNE and later on Cadena SER. For adults without qualms, which would later be called The fool on the Hill, a revolutionary format that quickly became popular for its soliloquies with poetic and philosophical reflections.

“A depression marked my history as the crazy man on the hill. I was tired of being the parrot announcer and I decided to seek originality, critical thinking, independence, beauty, culture...transmitting truth. And that means transmitting according to my mood. Sometimes madness and other times drift. “This is how the crazy man on the hill was born,” the legendary communicator once confessed.

He returned to the screens with The green dog (1988) y Nobody knows (1990) for Spanish Television.

In 1991 he recorded for Canal Sur thirteen nights, a popular space in which Antonio Gala maintained almost Socratic dialogues with Quintero that have remained in the history of television and literature.

In 1992 he directed the series for Antena 3 the mouth of the wolf and later in Onda Cero, Steppe wolf.

In 1996 he marked the era again with space Prisoner rope (1996), a program on Antena 3 in which prisoners serving their sentences opened up to Quintero.

In 2000, he returned to the Andalusian region with The Tramp and in 2002 he produced another legendary space: Red Mice.

As a businessman, Jesús Quintero was the creator and general director of Radio América and the radio and television production company Babilonia.

His long career earned him more than two hundred awards such as two Ondas Awards, a Golden Antenna, the Medal of Andalusia and the King of Spain Journalism award, among many others.

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