When the Spanish version of drag racing landed on our screens with its first season on May 30, 2021, only one drag queen had been a mainstream success (outside the circles of the LGBTIQ collective) on television in our country. You will remember it if you had Mtv in the 2000s or the local chain of your province connected at certain hours with the mythical channel by subscription. She is Deborah Ombres, who would later jump to Telecinco and Cuatro, before moving away from television and moving abroad.
The first drag presenter on TV in Spain
Without mincing words and always wearing black leather gloves as an essential part of her BDSM aesthetic, we met Deborah in 2001 thanks to the program MTV HOT, where he played the singers and celebs of the moment for three and a half years. Thus becoming the first presenter drag queen of television in Spain.
The character Javier Díaz Blanco, a native of Valladolid, was behind, liked it so much that the music chain ended up giving him a second program: Deborah and Sex, which aired between 2002 and 2004. After I would jump to general channels as a talk show host The Jungle of the famous (Antena 3), first and, later, as a reporter for Whoever that fails (Telecinco).
Telecinco
Finally, Cuatro was passed on at the beginning of the chain currently owned by Mediaset to present heartbreaker, space in which it would remain until 2006. However, during all this time Deborah he was not limited to just getting in front of the television cameras….
In November 2005 he published the book How many frogs do you have to kiss to find a prince?where she spoke for the first and, according to her, last time about their experiences in love and sexual relationships. In 2010 she would repeat as a writer with connecting with the sun, where he undressed physically and emotionally. Although she has also shown her talent in the theater with Silly her, silly him along with Canco Rodríguez and Cristina Urgel.
mtv
However, after Cuatro canceled heartbreakerDeborah would disappear from television.
Emigrant through Europe
Like so many other Spaniards who, due to the 2008 crisis, packed their bags and left Spain, Ombres did not hesitate to change the scene when the phone stopped ringing. Thus, he spent a year in a very small city in Germany called Saarbrücken, where he washed dishes in a hotel because he didn’t know any german. She would then go to London, where she came to work at a Zara (where tourists recognized her on several occasions), and where she would stay for a long time.
Until in 2017 he broke his anonymity to reappear in New York as ambassador of the Madrid World Pride. At that time he would also return to Madrid with the promise of a Barcelona production company that wanted the Valladolid artist to present, imminently, a RuPaul’s Drag Race in Spain called queens and that finally it would not be done. Nor would they call it when the format arrived at Atresmedia last year. Currently, she lives in Valladolid, away from the cameras again, although there are many of us who hope that she will not be like this for a long time.
Cover photo | gtres