The actor, producer and director Adolfo Fernández died 67 years ago this year in his house in Perales de Tajuña (Madrid), victim of cancer. His voice, his presence, his strength – worthy of a Bilbao (born in Seville) -, his ductility and his passion left him working until the last loss of the illness left him with his strength. His last volunteer was to donate his body to science, the tanatory or funerals.
Popular face thanks to series like Police, in the heart of the street; Los 80; red eagle (was the protagonist of Obi-Wan Kenobi); Guest rooms; The longest night, love is forever THE Alpha males, Fernández also has a CV full of enormous performances in cinema and, above all, in theatre, both on stage and in directing and promoting works by contemporary Spanish authors alongside his wife, Cristina Elso, with her company K Producciones.
This dramaturgical impulse has guided his professional endeavors since 2002, when he created his theater production company. And for this strength and his knowledge of the profession, Fernández was one of the most respected and appreciated performers among his companions.
Fernández arrived in Bilbao four years ago, the son of a canton and a gaditana, a working-class family based in Biscay. He studied with the Marists and worked in the Basque theater which was booming in the West. Dramaturgical management began at the end of that decade in front of the Sestao Theater School, with shows such as Sweet slut, Woyceck Yes TVT channel (Premio Ercilla 1991). “At that time, all the Basque actors knew each other at Nacional-1, having traveled from Bilbao to Madrid,” he remembers.
Al cine arrived in 1996 with A clean shot, and the skill of linking films (Un buen novio, Entre las piernas, El pianista, Los lobos de Washington, El corazón del guerrero, Yoyes, Kasbah, Hable con ella THE Life and color) scam series (Periodistas, Petra Delicado and the explosion of fame Police, in the heart of the street). When K Producciones started, it decided to concentrate on one type of work: “We have been since the time of state companies that developed plays by contemporary authors and brought us a lot of texts for us to produce. Every theater is political. The biggest synsorgada It is a political theater, for the zafiedad that it communicates. There will always be something to say or something to point out. Instead of being soldiers in a political party, we campaign at the top of the stage, with humor.” Because with the social demand, Fernández and Elso never abandoned the public: as much as possible, the better. “It’s only the political qualification scary, but, chico, that’s how it is,” he said.
In the scenarios, during the first decade of the 21st century, Both, Life and Death of Pier Paolo Pasolini, adaptation to scenes from the Bosnian film At the bottom of nothingness, Yo, Satan, The useless pond, 7:30 p.m. and a fascinating cabaret monologue about José Millán Astray, the founder of the Legion, entitled Singing under the bullets. At one point he left his company, he acted in The elephant man THE The flower pen y, directed by Mario Gas, fr Electra is in mourning, Frankie & Johnny Yes Carnival March.
On numerous occasions he spoke with the actress Sonia Almarcha and since Still life in a cunet (2012) at the troop Susana Abaitua joined us. In the cinema every year, between 2006 and 2008, he made his debut Women in the park, Tívoli Hotel, Mataharis, We are all invited, An invisible woman Yes Welcome to Adieu-Gutmann.
Until cancer canceled his vital plans for the first time. He tells this diary, after overcoming the illness for the first time, 50 years ago in 2008: “I don’t think about myself, but about my daughter and the courageous father who is about to lose. You discover that you are stronger than you thought, that you are even prepared for goodbyes. to fight your match. He had cut off a small part of the tongue, learned to speak it again and, after the corresponding speech therapy, regained his diction.
From this experience, he acquired new artistic impulses and reaffirmed his convictions. What is the situation in his beloved Basque Country: “We still need to know clearly. abertzale, it’s fascism abertzale. The Basque Country has a rotten brain. There, people give importance to things they didn’t build. You are born in a place, you don’t choose it. Eso de ‘Soy español’ como si lo fueras como una gracia divina… What are the banners? A little more than tattoos for adults. »
Roundness is also tense when reflecting on his profession: “All artistic work is done without red, and that must be the task. Working in our profession, for a lot of technical development, means working in a very precarious world.
Thanks to this commitment to the politician, he went to know and convince Rafael Chirbes to be able to go on stage. On the shore (2018), novel of the best portrait of urban corruption and Spanish moral rot. “Find a work that defines us, that teaches us about the economic madness that was taking place in Spain. I read the novel which was no longer published and I understood that it showed that the fault is not the fault of others, that the whole country was childish,” he said in this press release.
On the shore —with which K Producciones won its third Max Prize—, later Mortgage seizure, the flack of the Bolsheviks (one-on-one with Abaitua) and Adolfo Fernández’s Jasón in there Medea by Ana Belén adapted by Vicente Molina Foix and directed by José Carlos Plaza. Because no matter how bad the cinema is (Silence in the snow, Evelyn, All is silence, Pieles) and television, theater was his artistic lama.
After the pandemic, we increased the production of Siveria, on LGBTI activists in Putin’s Russia, and The swimmer of turbulent waters, whose career was cut short by illness and recovered as best he could, while in television he worked on Homeland, Love in times of rebellion, Midas’ favorites, Alpha males Yes The longest night.
Interpretation and theater (he has already prepared his next work, Thermal sensation, co-directed and adapted by him for his debut in February 2026), Fernández only precedes his humanist commitment: workshops in prisons, I support and help any cause that he considers just… Always anonymously; Elsewhere: in EL PAÍS he appears face to face and offers his testimony on accusations of pederasty against a Marist brother who was a basketball coach at the order’s school in Bilbao.
Passionate conversationalist, especially when it comes to political and social news; capable of ardently defending the interpretation and subsequently allowing a “me, he can be a very active actor” to emerge; voracious reader; pleasure in the kitchen when you feed your guests; Many of his family… All this editor was able to live and enjoy alongside him. As Fernández defined it among the chanzas, “we are concuñados, que la palabra se las trae.” Unfortunately, with his wife, Cristina, and his daughter, Violeta, by his side for his farewell, this new desire came true: “I would like to continue producing theater and continue working in my office until I die. I do not consider the idea of gloating.”
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