• Obituary Concha Márquez Piquer dies, a life of copla

There are interpreters who are difficult to locate in a specific role or in a certain film, because his bearing close to the imposing, his deep voice at a step of thunder and his almost constant presence in the media for reasons perhaps unrelated to the strictness of his profession, make him a little part of everyone. Ramiro Oliveros was in every series that public television wanted to boast about. From Estudio 1 or The saga of the Rius in the 70s to All men are equal in the 90s, through The joys and the shadows or The black mask in the 80s, their territory, their kingdom, was the common and shared imaginary around the only screen for so long of all (or almost). If we add to this his solid career in the theater, his immeasurable filmography for a good part of that exploitation cinema always forgotten and the irrefutable fact that he was the husband of the tonadillera Concha Márquez Piquer, there is no other: it can be difficult to locate a work because, in some way, the work was him.

On Thursday he died at his home in Pozuelo de Alarcón at the age of 82. He did it after a long illness that brought him and took him to the hospital with excessive and very uncomfortable insistence. And this after the death just two years ago of his wife since 1982. In October he suffered a heart attack and his lungs were causing him to be ill-fated. A multi-organ failure, says the medical report as the cause of death.

Ramiro Oliveros was born in Madrid on March 13, 1941. His biography says and emphasizes that before dedicating himself to acting he studied Medicine. But he soon fell into his vocation which was both the theatre and the world itself. In 1962 he travelled to London and there trained at the Royal Court Theatre with director Joan Littlewood. Then he would continue in Paris and Frankfurt at a time when traveling was an exception and even a privilege.

Soon, in 1970, he premiered in Madrid and Paris his work Abderramán y Cleopatra. And that same year he staged his version Life is a Dream entitled Process to Segismundo, for which he received the prize for direction and interpretation at the Palermo Festival (Italy). At that time TVE proposed him to act in the dramatic space Hora 11, where he participated in more than a dozen titles as a protagonist such as Una mujer sin importante, El abanico de Lady Windermere or La falsa amante.

From here, the list of works in which he participated either as an actor or director seems endless: The game of one, The pupil wants to be a tutor, The giants of the mountain, The dead, The great theater of the world, The day you love me, The golden ribbon ... His last role was in 2000, the Don Juan Tenorio with Juan Carlos Naya at the Teatro Español. That without forgetting his participation a year later in Eloísa is under an almond tree, for the centenary of Jardiel Poncela.

Among his more than forty films are La leyenda del alcalde de Zalamea (1973), El pantano de los cuervos (1974), Una mujer prohibida (1974), Ya soy mujer (1975), Volvoreta (1976), La mosca hispánica (1976), Esposa y amante (1977), La chica del pijama amarillo (1977), Memorias de Leticia Valle (1979), El poderosa ininfluencia de la luna (1981), The King and Queen (1982) or El cafre (1985).

For lovers of the other Spanish cinema, the occult, of the B series, Oliveros is almost a myth. Or at least an obligatory reference. Films such as Virus (1980), by Antonio Margheritti, Journey to the Beyond (1980), by Sebastián D'Arbó, Being (1982), also by D'Arbó, or, the most surreal of them all, Hundra (1983), by Matt Cimber, have him as the interpreter whose mere appearance balanced and gave brightness to the lack of control of essentially free librettos.

But if anyone doubts the almost mesmeric power of his voice close his eyes and remember the character played by George Peppard in The A-Team. Indeed, it was him.

Otherwise, Oliveros was married three times. With his first wife, who died in 1974, he had two children, and with the second, an Argentine photographer, he married in 1977 and separated in 1982. On December 31, 1988 he married civilly with what he considers the love of his life, Concha Márquez Piquer, who never wanted the nullity of his marriage with the bullfighter Curro Romero. They had one daughter, Iris. After Concha died in 2021, the actor confessed to the newspaper ABC: "If it wasn't for my daughter, I would have ended my life the day Concha died."

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