[3] He made his La Liga debut in a 2–1 win over Español in the following season, and was eventually awarded Spanish Footballer of the Year by Don Balón.

He became a prominent member of the successful sides during the late 1970s and 1980s, in a squad which also featured Santillana, Uli Stielike, Vicente del Bosque and José Antonio Camacho.

[6] After leaving Real Madrid, Juanito spent two seasons with Málaga, helping the side to promote from the second tier in his first year, as champions – as legendary László Kubala was the manager[7]– and scoring one of his five goals of the following campaign against former teammate Francisco Buyo,[8] before retiring in 1991 after a very brief spell with amateurs Los Boliches, also in his native Andalusia.

One of these was against Celtic in the quarter-finals of the 1979–80 European Cup, with Real losing 2–0 in the first match in Glasgow: in the second leg the team managed to come from behind after scoring three times without response (the third by him), thus reaching the last four; other comebacks in this period included the downings of Inter Milan and Anderlecht.

[17] During his career, Juanito was involved in several violent incidents: in 1978, he received a two-year suspension from European competitions after assaulting referee Adolf Prokop in a match against Grasshoppers.

He was again banned in 1987, this time for four years – an error in communications from UEFA meant that the sanction was originally thought to be five – after deliberately stamping on Bayern Munich's Lothar Matthäus' face;[2][18][19][20][21] as an apology, he later gave the German a bullfighter's cape and rapier.