María Antonieta de las Nieves marked 10 years since Rubén Aguirre died with a public tribute that called him a cherished companion and a gentleman. The message brought El Chavo del Ocho back into view through one of the cast members who knew him best.
She said Aguirre had been gone for 10 years and described him as someone she would always carry in her heart, a reminder that the bond between the two outlived the programs that made them famous. The post surfaced now because the anniversary gave the memory a date readers could not miss, and because Aguirre remains tied above all to El profesor Jirafales in El Chavo del 8.
That role was only part of the work he shared with de las Nieves. He also worked with her in Los supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada and El Chapulín Colorado, part of the wider Chespirito universe that linked their careers for decades. Aguirre was born on 15 June 1934 in Saltillo, Coahuila, met Roberto Gómez Bolaños in 1968, and stayed connected to that world until 1995, when the Chespirito program stopped being broadcast.
The date of his death is the one detail that does not sit neatly across the record. One account places it on 16 June 2016 and another on 17 June 2016, though both point to the same loss at age 82 and to the same end in his home in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, from complications of pneumonia. The disagreement changes nothing about the tribute, but it does show how old memories can still carry small fractures even when the affection around them remains intact.
For de las Nieves, the message was not just a date check. It was a public act of remembrance that kept Aguirre present as a performer, a colleague and a friend, and it answered the reason readers were searching now: a decade after his death, the cast still draws attention because the characters have never really left the screen or the people who grew up with them.
