Quintana was born in Pamplona, Spain in 1891, the eldest of three children of Ignacio Quintana Barreneche and Saturnina Urra Vizcar. His father worked as a postman. Quintana opened the Quintana Hotel at 18 Plaza del Castillo in Pamplona. The bullfighters who came to Pamplona usually stayed in the hotel. Juanito Quintana was a big aficionado and worked as an entrepreneur organizing bullfights. Between 1926 and 1930 he was president of Club Taurino in Pamplona. Quintana married Juana Mantecón Iturri and had a son, Juan.
During the Second Spanish Republic Quintana was a prominent Republican sympathizer and political organizing often took place in his hotel. In July 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, Quintana was away from Pamplona, because he had gone toMont-de-Marsan to see bullfights, which saved him from being a victim of repression against Republicans, but his hotel was requisitioned by the new authorities and he could never get it back. He settled for some years in France, where his brother Alberto ran a hotel in the town of Biarritz. In 1941 both brothers were able to return to Spain and settled in San Sebastián. During World War II Alberto Quintana was part of the Comet line, which helped Allied soldiers and airmen return to Britain during the Second World War after crossing the Basque-Navarre border on the way to Gibraltar.
Juanito Quintana is known for his friendship with the writer Ernest Hemingway. In 1924, when Hemingway was in Madrid, the bullfighting critic Rafael Hernandez advised him to go to the festival of San Fermin in Pamplona and stay at the Hotel Quintana, where he could enjoy the best bullfighting atmosphere. He did, and Hemingway and Quintana struck up a close friendship which only ended with the writer's death. Hemingway stayed at the Hotel Quintana on his visits to Pamplona in 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1929 and 1931. Quintana appears embodied in the character of Juanito Montoya, owner of the Hotel Montoya in the novelThe Sun Also Rises of 1926. In the fifties, after a long absence from Spain, Hemingway returned and resumed their relationship. The Hotel Quintana no longer existed, but Juanito Quintana arranged accommodation on their visits to Pamplona in 1953 and 1959, and accompanied Hemingway in his travels through several cities, united by their love of bullfighting. Hemingway refers to him in Death in the Afternoon: “Quintana, the best aficionado and most loyal friend in Spain, and with a fine hotel with all the rooms full”.
