Carlos Pumares Pardo, a Basque journalist and renowned film critic, passed away at eighty, according to family sources. He became a household name through the legendary radio program Polvo de Estrellas.
Pumares was one of the era’s most recognizable voices in cinema criticism. A versatile artist, he wrote, directed, and acted in various productions, and authored books including A Perfect Marriage and So Close and Far.
The death notice appeared on his X profile: Rest in peace, the greatest of cinema in Spain. It was always Stardust and will be so from today.
Born on September 29, 1943, in Portugalete in the Basque Country, Pumares held a degree in Physical Sciences, yet his career charted a different course, shaping a life devoted to film and media.
During the 1970s he wrote screenplays for films such as La casa de las chivas (1972) directed by León Klimovsky, Marital Separation (1973) by Angelino Fons, and The Forbidden Woman (1974) by José Luis Ruiz Marcos. He also contributed to the television series The Strange Love of Vampires (1977) by Klimovsky and The Hotel with a Thousand and One Stars (1978-79) for TVE, where he shared screen time with Joaquín Parejo.
He served as a film consultant on The Key, a groundbreaking RTVE program that ran from 1976 to 1985 and later on Antena 3 TV from 1990 to 1993, under the hosting and direction of journalist José Luis Balbín. The show mixed viewer questions with expert analysis, inviting diverse viewpoints on topics traditionally considered controversial, including Opus Dei and NATO. This format marked a shift in Spanish television by foregrounding plural perspectives on provocative issues.
In the early 1980s, Pumares began presenting Polvo de Estrellas, a program about cinema on Antena 3 Radio, which later transitioned to Antena 3 TV and Onda Cero. After Polvo de Estrellas was canceled on Onda Cero, Pumares collaborated with Terra on a space called El monolith de Pumares, answering users’ cinema questions online. The domain remained active until the summer of 2004. He also contributed to Martian Chronicles until his passing in July 2005.
Pumares wrote film reviews for La Razón and hosted a segment on Radio Voz called Natural Health, a daily feature on natural medicine. He maintained a cinema blog and contributed to the morning magazine Sin ir más Next on Aragon TV, as well as hosting the weekly Veo Cine on Veo 7.
As an actor, he appeared in FBI: Frikis Busca Incordiar (2004) by Javier Cárdenas and in Torrente 3, Misin Protector (2005) by Santiago Segura. He also wrote screenplays for La casa de las chivas (1972), Marriage Separation (1973), and The Forbidden Woman (1974). He contributed to The Strange Love of Vampires (1977) and the TV series Hotel of a Thousand and One Stars (1978). Pumares took part in various television projects, including Sálvame and the Telecinco program Mira qué jump!, where he served on the jury.
His literary collaborations included works with Manuel Villegas López, Jaime Salom, and José Luis Garci, among others. Notable titles include House of Chivas (1971); with Hugo Pratt, The Secret of Tristan Bantam: Rendezvous in Bahia (1971); with Alberto Solsona, José Luis Garci, and Adolfo Castaño, The Tales of Popeye (1973); A Perfect Marriage (1973); So Close and Far (1973); Colonists: cinematographic plot (1974); with Garci, Castaño, and Solsona, The Tales of Rosario (1974); and Mandrake: The X size (1974). Other collaborations include One of Many (1974) with Lázaro Irazábal, At Dawn (1975) with Juan José Daza del Castillo and Abelardo Empecinado, and El chalet de los geranios (1975) with Enrique Herreros and Domingo López. He worked again with Daza del Castillo on Night of the Vampires (1975) and with Domingo López on Wild Wild East (2015).
Research into Pumares’s life and impact was compiled in Carlos Pumares: A Cry in the Night (2006) by Iván Reguera and Juan José Aparicio, contributing to a growing body of scholarship that recognizes his influence on Spanish cinema discourse.