Actor Eusebio Poncela dies at 79

BarcelonaActor Eusebio Poncela died this Wednesday at the age of 79 at his home in El Escorial. Poncela had a long career in theater, television, and especially film. In this field, he made his debut with The week of the murderer (1972), by Eloy de la Iglesia, where he played a homosexual character in the midst of Franco's regime. But the actor stood out above all with the disturbing Rapture (1979), by Iván Zulueta. Considered one of the fundamental films of Spanish cinema, it explored heroin addiction and the vampiric nature of cinema with a groundbreaking audiovisual format. A natural seducer, Poncela worked with Pedro Almodóvar on two of his most iconic films of the 1980s: Matador (1986) and The law of desire (1987). But before that, he had already built a solid theatrical career. One of the Madrid actor's most memorable roles was that of the character of Dante in the film Martin (Hache) (1997), by Adolfo Aristarain.

Popularity came to him during the eighties, largely thanks to his role as Carlos Deza in the television adaptation of Gonzalo Torrente Ballester's novel The joys and the shadows (1982). Shortly after he worked with Aristarain on the series Pepe Carvalho from Televisión Española, with a script by Domènec Font: Poncela played the detective created by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, and Ovidi Montllor played Biscúter, his assistant. The actor also worked with filmmaker Carlos Saura in El Dorado (1988), the story of the search for the mythical kingdom.

From the beginning, his roles conveyed a verisimilitude that was difficult to find in Spanish cinema at the time, especially due to the type of characters he played, often adding disturbing nuances with a naturalness that very few actors achieved. However, the actor shunned stereotypes. "More than once I've been pigeonholed by prejudice: for being poor, for being gay, for being a drug addict, and now for being old. And, above all, it seems that I'm not forgiven for always doing whatever I want and going it alone," he said in an interview in Abc.

Poncela had explained on several occasions that he was lucky to be able to overcome his heroin addiction and that he saw many friends and acquaintances die as a result of the drug. To overcome his addiction, he moved for a time to Ushuaia, Argentina. In the early 2000s, he resumed his professional career with horror film projects such as Black prickly pear (2001), by Pedro L. Barbero and Vicente J. Martín, and The Valdemar legacy (2010), by José Luis Alemán. At that time he also received his only Goya Award nomination for his work in Intact (2001), by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, where he also coincided with Max von Sydow.

Born in the Madrid neighborhood of Vallecas in 1945 and a graduate in drama, Poncela forged his talent in the theater. He debuted with the play Mariana Pineda by Lorca, played by María Dolores Pradera and which featured titles such as Romeo and Juliet and a successful Marat-Sade by Adolfo Marsillach. Television and film kept him away from the stage, where he directed around twenty shows. After his professional hiatus, in the last two decades he starred in plays such as Macbeth (2004), the trilogy Oedipus (2009), This is not Bernarda Alba's house (2017), in which she received praise for playing Bernarda Alba, and The servant, by Robin Maugham (2019). His last show to be seen in Barcelona was Kiss of the Spider Woman, in 2023, which arrived at the Goya Theater after an extensive tour throughout Spain.

In recent years, she has combined her work on stage with filming television series. Poncela has appeared in fictions such as Red Eagle (2015), from Spanish Television; The accident, from Telecinco, and Merlin sapere aude, from Movistar+ (2021). He participated in the latter just after the lockdown. "I made it because I was fed up with being locked up during the pandemic. I don't remember who the producer was, a big shot, but he came and I asked him for a lot of money," he explained in an interview with The Country–. The scripts seemed weak to me, but there were two things that caught my attention. One was Maria Pujalte, who is a wonderful girl, and the other was singing a Mari Trini song that I chose. That was enough."

Her last television role was in the series Nuances, from SkyShowtime, where he played a renowned psychiatrist alongside Elsa Pataky and Luis Tosar.