María Teresa Campos has died this morning at the age of 82 after a life dedicated to the small screen, as confirmed by the family. The veteran television presenter suffered acute respiratory failure on Sunday and for this reason she was transferred to the Fundación Jiménez Díaz Hospital in Madrid, where she was surrounded by her relatives until the moment of her death.
In recent months, the communicator remained confined to her home, completely withdrawn from television and public life, while the television members of her family conveyed their concern about her rapid deterioration. María Teresa is survived by her two daughters, Terelu and Carmen; three grandchildren, Alejandra, José María and Carmen; and a great-grandson, Marc.
It was in May 2017 when the then already emeritus queen of mornings suffered a cerebral ischemia in the vertebrobasilar territory that deteriorated her and eventually ended her career. Her last program, La Campos móvil, an interview space, was withdrawn from the grid in 2021 due to low audience, but it was two years before, in 2019, when Mediaset decided not to renew her contract with the network.
Born on June 18, 1941 in Tetouan (then the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco), Campos moved to Malaga shortly after birth, a city from which she considered herself a native and which saw her grow personally and professionally. The third of six siblings, she grew up in a wealthy family, without luxuries, but without the narrowness of the Spanish postwar period.
She studied in religious schools run by nuns and at the age of 15 she already participated in the Radio Juventud de Málaga contest, where one of her brothers worked. He completed his university studies at the University of Malaga, where he graduated in Philosophy and Letters. From a very young age, she became a regular voice on Malaga radio, which made her popular in the city.
On September 12, 1964, María Teresa Campos married the journalist José María Borrego Doblas, a radio partner since 1957, in the cathedral of Málaga. With him she started a family but her marriage "was not very happy", as she acknowledged in her memoirs. Campos chose her career and, although she never legally separated from her husband, she went with her daughters to Madrid to lead her triumph on television.
In 1984, while her name and face were becoming more and more frequent on national television, when she was about to become a brand new Hermida girl, her husband took his own life. The presenter never spoke in public about that tragic event.
Her rise and coronation as the queen of the mornings occurred between 1990 and 1991, when she replaced Hermida himself, who was leaving the program to take over the evening newscast, and surpassed the audience ratings of his teacher. In 1996, with a consolidated top-level career, she signed for the private network Telecinco. The transfer of her to the private chain allowed her daughters to participate in different ways in her programs.
She won an Ondas award in 2002 during her first stage at Telecinco, but soon after Antena 3 signed her and that made Ana Rosa Quintana become her competition. María Teresa Campos presented Cada día on Antena 3 while Ana Rosa Quintana was in charge of El programa de Ana Rosa, on Telecinco. The battle for the audience was finally won by Quintana in 2005 and María Teresa decided to retire for a while.
His break lasted two years. He returned to Telecinco in 2007, the network that experienced his last television success two years later, leading weekend afternoons with ¡Qué tiempo tan feliz!. Meanwhile, from 2019 to 2017, she also collaborated weekly as Defender of the audience in the program Sálvame, a program that changed the lives of her two daughters.
In 2014, her relationship with actor Edmundo Arrocet was made public, an elderly romance that ended in 2019 through a WhatsApp message from the comedian, as she revealed to Hello! magazine. The last television space in which María Teresa Campos participated and which triumphed in the audience was the docu-reality show Las Campos, although for that reason they were labeled as great characters.
Among the decorations and awards he received in life are the Gold Medal for Merit at Work, the Gold Medal of Andalusia, the Clara Campoamor award or the Iris Toda una Vida award from the Academy of Sciences and Television Arts of Spain.
