At 67 years old, Ana Rosa Quintana does not think about retirement plans. Quite the opposite. This afternoon she begins a new professional challenge. “I had planned to retire in the morning and this change came. It is a decision that I would never have dared to make alone,” said the journalist during the presentation of her new program on Telecinco during the recent Vitoria Television Festival.
After almost 20 years as queen of television mornings with The Ana Rosa Program (started in January 2005), the popular presenter premieres this Monday TardeAR (5pm), which also includes her name and with which she intends to have a “very good time.” well and have fun.” “I think I've earned it,” she notes.
Its move to the afternoons was a request from the new managers of Mediaset España after the decision to cancel Sálvame. in that objective of giving way to a “new and renewed” Telecinco as Alessandro Salem, CEO of the audiovisual group, has pointed out. “The chain has asked me. I have to be grateful for these 19 years of success and tranquility and when they ask me, it is only fair to give back some of what they have given me,” Quintana told his audience when he announced the change.
Although TardeAR was scheduled to start on September 25, Telecinco's historic audience lows this summer (in July and August it fell to third place in the ranking behind Antena 3 and La 1 and this September it is on track to be repeated after the discreet start of programs like GH VIP 8 and Chinese Tales) advised him to bring his return forward a week.
Born in Madrid on January 12, 1956, Quintana began her professional career in the eighties in various radio stations (RNE, COPE, Radio 80...). Although in 1982 she signed with RTVE to present the nightly edition of Telediario, her landing on television came in 1994 with Telecinco where she presented the trial program Veredicto and later the magazine magazine Never is late.
At the beginning of 1997 he signed for Antena 3. There he presented Sinceramente Ana Rosa Quintana (along with Rosa Villacastín) and Sabor a ti (with Antonio Hidalgo), an afternoon show that was initially only going to be broadcast in the summer but remained on the screen for six seasons. and that turned Quintana into a reference presenter.
After the decline in audience for Sabor a ti, the format was not renewed and Telecinco signed Quintana again to compete with María Teresa Campos, until then the star of the network and who had just taken over in the mornings on Antena 3. Despite Regarding the television rivalry between both presenters, Quintana referred to Campos after her recent death as “the queen of the mornings” and as a professional who “has paved the way for many others.” Furthermore, she praised her loyalty: “We have had our loves and our rivalries but we have always been loyal to each other.”
Ana Rosa's program premiered on January 10, 2005 and quickly took over the audience leadership in its time slot, which it did not abandon until its end on July 25. The program also earned Quintana an Ondas award as best presenter in 2011. The last stage of the show was marked by her absence from the small screen for eleven months due to breast cancer.
In addition to being a journalist and presenter, Quintana is a businesswoman. She was president and CEO of Cuarzo Producciones until 2018 and is currently the largest shareholder and president of Unicorn Content, producer of spaces such as El program de Ana Rosa and, obviously, the new TardeAR as well as The critical look and Vamos a ver, substitutes for The Ana Rosa Program.
On a personal level, Quintana has been married twice. She was married to the journalist and writer Alfonso Rojo between 1983 and 1987, with whom she had a son: Álvaro. After a long romantic relationship with the film director José Luis Garci, she married in 2004 the architect and real estate businessman Juan Muñoz, with whom she has stated on several occasions “to be as in love or more than on the first day.” As a result of this relationship, two children were born: Juan and Jaime.
With a leading morning show with more than half a million viewers, Quintana has become the flagship of Telecinco and one of the most influential women in Spain. Her constant criticism of the left-wing coalition government between PSOE and Podemos (and especially the new housing law) has characterized her last years. A political position that has earned her confrontations with another of Telecinco's flagships, Jorge Javier Vázquez, with whom she maintains a unique relationship of friendship/enmity.
Quintana now returns to the afternoons two decades after that Sabor a ti on Antena 3 and is confident of becoming a leader again for what he will have to compete with the next premiere on TVE of La Plaza de La 1, presented by Jordi González, and in Antena 3 with Ahora Sonsoles, where he will have as a rival an old acquaintance: his former collaborator Sonsoles Ónega.
