Roberto Luis Garriga Agramonte

Cuban director of radio and television. Founder of the University Theater and Cuban Television.

Born in La Habana. His father was from Santiago and his mother from Camagüey, who encouraged him toward piano, from which he graduated from the Conservatory with excellent grades in October 1938.

He completed his high school studies at "Academia Baldor" and for several years took the Seminary of Dramatic Arts offered by the University Theater where he performed and received various awards for this work and for directing theatrical productions at the Academy of Dramatic Arts (ADAD), the Theater Foundation, and the tour that the university ensemble made through Mexico and Guatemala in February 1950.

Already on this path, despite paternal opposition due to rejection of his artistic inclinations, he began paying for his university studies at the School of Philosophy and Letters of the University of La Habana through his work, obtaining the position by competitive exam. There, he graduated with notable results, thanks to which he taught classes at that prestigious institution, combining them with those he gave at the Municipal School of Dramatic Art in this city.

His approach to Radio occurred in 1947, when Gaspar Pumarejo began looking for talent to inaugurate a new radio station, Unión Radio, on Avenida del Prado. He hired him along with Antonio Vázquez Gallo (reference director) and both began directing radio programs with new actors and actresses from the industry, such as: Gina Cabrera and Margarita Balboa. He learned the mysteries of the medium in his first performances and narrations of novels alongside Raúl Terrier. He wrote stories for a suspense segment and other dramatized stories on that station.

In the 1950s he writes and directs for both CMQ Radio and CMQ Television. He is also a professor of acting at the Municipal School and at the Seminary of Dramatic Arts of the University of La Habana.

In October 1950, when Unión Radio Televisión, Channel 4, was inaugurated, Garriga was already Head of Publicity for the radio station and had debuted as director-producer in "Mujeres que yo conocí" written by José Sánchez Arcilla and "Historias del más allá" with scripts by Nora Badía; which did not prevent him from writing his first Radio novels about the lives of Catholic saints.

He was among those who received the first television equipment that arrived in Cuba for the founding channel through Rancho Boyeros airport, but he resigned from Publicity for television dramaturgy; studying scriptwriting and audiovisual direction with those CMQ workers who had studied in the U.S. and later obtained a three-month training stay at the Columbia Broadcasting System studios. Upon his return, he continued writing for Unión Radio, while also writing, producing and directing programs for the soap company Gravi, in "La Novela Gravi" and "La Novela Rina" broadcast on CMQ Radio.

He arrived at Television in 1951 as scriptwriter and director of "Estrellas de Ultramar" on Channel 4, where Margarita Balboa (National Television Prize 2004) interviewed artists from Ibero-American cinema who traveled to Cuba.

Since 1952, he was writing at CMQ-TV, Channel 6, dramatic scripts for "Estudio 15/Cristal (3)" and "El Humo del Recuerdo". In August 1954, he premiered "Esta es tu vida" there, a dramatic space with weekly frequency that presented raw stories from daily life, which lasted three and a half years, giving Garriga great satisfaction and various awards as author and director. In July 1956, he directed and produced "El Rostro del Destino," a dramatic of tension and suspense.

By May 1957 "La Novela de las 10" emerged, an episodic program where he adapted, produced and directed. Among others, the telenovelas premiered there: "La culpa de todos"; "Mi apellido es Valdés," "Cuando los hijos acusan," "Puerto Esperanza" and "El Alma no tiene color". The space featured original stories and adaptations of his Radio novels, it was broadcast Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for thirty minutes and became a precedent for "Grandes Novelas," which after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, assumed by Garriga himself, adapted the most famous novels of universal literature.

When the Cuban Revolution triumphed, Roberto Garriga had a vast and successful resume as an actor, author, adapter, producer and director of Radio and Television with proven experience and results in various radio and television genres and formats in Cuba. Like many Cuban creators, he received multiple offers to lend his name and experience to other Latin American television stations but faithful to his Mambi heritage, he rejected blank checks and like others of his generation chose to train new cameramen, actors, actresses and camera and stage directors to replace those who had emigrated.

In the 1960s he taught camera classes to the so-called "Seven Men of Gold" made up of, among others, Antonio González, "Cheito" González and Ernesto Padrino. In the 1970s, he taught two more courses in this specialty and three for directors, batches from which emerged, to mention only some proven television talents: Eduardo Moya, Xiomara Blanco, "Cheito" González and Loly Buján. To this was added another actor training course.

Faithful to his tradition, over time he became founding professor at the Superior Institute of Art (ISA); he taught Dramaturgy at the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV) and trained several generations of Vietnamese and Korean screenwriters and directors, to mention only some examples of his contribution to specialized pedagogy in television for other countries.

This teaching work did not distance him from studies and he shone equally in the dramaturgical melting pot of "Teatro ICR" where Marcos Behmaras conceived the participation of artists as a prize, in story segments and in other theatrical projects.

In 1964 theater on television was restarted with "The Sweet Bird of Youth," by Tennessee Williams, starring Raquel Revuelta, Enrique Almirante and Enrique Santiesteban, with director Roberto Garriga, also "Réquiem para una reclusa," among others. In Sweet Bird, Garriga's direction was extraordinary. This is noted in a fragment of specialized criticism, in this case the opinion of Orlando Quiroga, in the magazine Bohemia, from June 19, 1964:

"Teatro ICR marked a point of responsibility, maturity and professionalism that we had been waiting for a long time on the small screens" and the review concludes by asserting that it "was the best television program through 1964".

Until 1988, the date of his death, Garriga accumulated in his credit, his masterful adaptations of the most famous universal literary novels broadcast with cultural educational intent in "Grandes Novelas" during the 1960s and their general direction. Among others, we remember now: "Ana Karenina", "The Brothers Karamazov", "The Stars Look Down", "For Whom the Bell Tolls", "The Visit of the Old Lady" and "The Enchanted Soul".

Subsequently added to this list were "Doña Bárbara", "Las impuras" and coming from the Radio novels, "Sol de Batey" (adaptation of the radio story by Dora Alonso) and "Médico de guardia". This did not prevent him from translating and adapting classic theatrical works such as "The Sweet Bird of Youth", "The Crucible", "Jaque al Rey", "Palos y huesos", "El sombrero de tres picos" and "Filomena y Marturano".

Among his contributions to televised dramatized genres is the inauguration of "Esta es tu vida" with accounts of real facts that occurred in society; prelude to the Telenovela anchored in everyday life and with deep social denunciation: "Mi apellido es Valdés," about abandoned children in the Havana Charity and Maternity Home continued the radio tradition created by numerous Cuban authors since the 1940s in Cuba.

To Garriga we owe the resurgence of Cuban telenovela starting from the model created in Cuba since 1952 by Mario Barral López in "La Novela en Televisión", with the fruitful repercussion on screens of "Sol de Batey," which made an era and demonstrated after the exhibition in Cuba of the Brazilian telenovela "The Slave Girl Isaura," that the romantic-melodramatic-serialized genre, displayed by O'Globo with this work, was not foreign to Cubans since they had been its creators decades earlier.

Roberto Garriga, since the First Festival organized by the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) received its highest award (Caracol Prize) for various works in which he participated: 1984 Best theatrical dramatic writer for "Aire frío". Adaptation of the work. Starring Verónica Lynn.

1985 Best television adaptation and direction "Las impuras". ICRT Festival (Radio and Television). Best dramatic recreational program "Las impuras". In 1982, Garriga had received the Raúl Gómez García Distinction for the 20th anniversary of the Culture Union and in 1986, during the Festival of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) he received a tribute for his uninterrupted work in the audiovisual medium.

There is still much to tell, analyze and study, not only about his work but about the dramaturgical-communicative-audiovisual aesthetic forged by Roberto Luis Garriga Agramonte, who died tragically when he was 62 years old and still had much to contribute to our dramaturgy and television direction. For that reason he will always be a figure in Cuban culture.