Antonio Mercero

Born in Lasarte-Oria (Guipuzcoa), he soon became clear about what he wanted to dedicate his life to. “My mother wanted him to be a notary. I went to Valladolid to study Law and imbued myself with cinema. When I returned home, my mother asked me: ‘Well Antontxo, what now? Do you want to be a notary or a property registrar?’ And I answered him: ‘I want to be a film director’. And my mother says: ‘But are you crazy?’ Big mess, family crisis. I went to Madrid and entered film school and started a new life”. He finished his studies at the institution in 1962, the year in which he obtained the Golden Shell for best short film at the San Sebastián Festival for  Lección de arte.

He made his feature debut in 1963 with  Se necesita chico , but achieved his first great success on television with  Crónicas de un pueblo , broadcast between 1971 and 1974, about the daily life of Puebla Nueva del Rey Sancho, a fictitious Castilian town, focusing on everything in the mayor, the corporal of the Civil Guard, the teacher, and the priest – played by  Antonio Mercero himself – although there was also room for various characters.

But above all, he attracted attention with the Kafkaesque telefilm  La cabina , co-written with  José Luis Garci , and starring  José Luis López Vázquez , as an ordinary citizen who was trapped in a telephone booth. The  Spanish Black Mirror  of the time made history after being broadcast on December 13, 1972, on TVE. Above all, it was interpreted as a metaphor for the lack of freedom of expression, and criticism of the censorship that managed to elude it, although the director himself warned that it was “a parable open to all kinds of interpretations that, depending on sensitivity, culture and formation of each one, will be interpreted differently”.

“We made a horror and science fiction film knowing the interpretations that were going to be given to it,” he commented in an interview. “The politicians did not see it clearly, they thought it was a criticism of Francoism, they stopped the project for a long time, but after a few months Adolfo Suárez [at that time director of RTVE] gave the go-ahead for it to be shot. Some things were cut off, for example, at one point the truck carrying López Vázquez locked in the cab passed a Ministry on Paseo de la Castellana. And the censorship said: “That pass from the cabin by the Ministry, get out!” He won the Emmy Award for Best TV Movie. He also achieved a huge impact with  La noche del licenciado (1979), about an heir to the gentry who has chosen to become a clown, and which is apparently an allegory of his own choice of audiovisual director profession.

On the big screen, he recovered López Vázquez for  Manchas de sangre en un coche nuevo , where the actor plays a wealthy individual who opens a new car, but after observing an accident on the road, does not help the victims. Shortly after, without apparent explanation, blood stains appear on the car seat. Papá’s War  adapts the novel by  Miguel Delibes  “The Dethroned Prince”, about a boy jealous of his newborn brother, played by the young prodigy  Lolo García , who also starred under his orders  Tobi , where he was a boy with wings, but It didn’t have the same impact.

Due to its social depth, and for being his greatest contribution to Spanish popular culture,   the television series  Verano azul , from 1981, about a gang of five boys and two girls, during a summer vacation in Spain, stands out in the work of Antonio Mercero . Nerja (Málaga), which emptied the streets on Sunday afternoons during its broadcast. The children’s team, led by  Juan José Artero  , became very popular, but also  María Garralón , the painter Julia, and above all  Antonio Ferrandis ., the fisherman Chanquete. The use of a naturalistic language was very striking, but above all the treatment of issues of the Spanish reality hitherto unpublished on our television, such as the breakdown of the family after the recently approved divorce law, the hippies, juvenile delinquency and even environmentalism. None of the 19 episodes was wasted.

Another milestone,  Turno de oficio , from 1986, about three lawyers, which painted another realistic picture of the world of justice and crime in Spain at the time. With this production, Carme Elías ,  Juan Luis Galiardo  and above all a then unknown  Juan Echanove reached the peak of popularity  . At the end he decides that he will not return to the series. “It was exhausting because each chapter was like a different movie. By making series one notices how he ages, while making movies you notice that you come back to life”. Luckily, he thinks better of it and returns to revolutionize television, at the time of the birth of private channels, with  Farmacia de guardia  (1991-1995), on Antena 3, starring Concha Cuetos  and  Carlos Larrañaga , who repeat as a divorced couple, just like in  Verano azul . For years he was the great model of Spanish television productions, shot in a short time, in usual settings, and with representative characters of all possible age groups. He said goodbye to the small screen with  Manolito Gafotas , starring the famous character from  Elvira Lindo ‘s children’s novels .

In cinema, he was very successful with a children’s film,  Goodnight, Mr. Monster , with the group – fashionable at the time – Licorice faced  Paul Naschy  as the werewolf and other famous villains, and he exploited the urban legend that Francisco Franco could having had a double to replace him in public events in the moving  Wait for me in heaven . He also shot the most impartial feature film about the Civil War ever made in Spain,  La hora de los valientes  –about a guard at the Prado Museum who protects a Goya canvas during the war– and moved people with the adaptation of  Albert ‘s work Espinosa  on children with cancer  4th floor . Before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he treated the terrible disease in the excellent  And who are you? ,  with great work by the veteran  Manuel Alexandre , accompanied by López Vázquez, who was collaborating with him for the last time. “I had a moral obligation to the disease suffered by a friend of mine, to whom I dedicated the film. It could have been me, ”he commented in an interview, in which he did not make it clear if he already sensed that it was going to happen to him.

As his health worsened over the next few years, he withdrew from public life. “I remember that when he no longer remembered many things, we watched our movie together at his house,” Espinosa recalls in his article this week. He “Looked at her all over, smiling as if it were the first time he had seen her. When he finished the session he was excited and asked me who directed it. I told him that he and his happy face was extraordinary. He was proud to discover something that he had created. We cried and laughed so much that day.”

His children have continued his legacy, beginning to work by his side. The eldest,  Ignacio Mercero , has directed episodes of series such as  El tiempo entre costuras . The youngest,  Antonio Santos Mercero , has co-created series such as  Hospital Central . Being president of the  Álex de la Iglesia Academy , and being ill, the Goya of Honor brought him home, a moment captured in a video in which the Basque also recognized him with enormous affection, which was one of the reasons why made movies