Aside of being a priest and activist, Espinal was also a poet, journalist and filmmaker. He worked for a brief period in Spanish television until moving to Bolivia; he directed the social issues-themed "Cuestión urgente" (lit. "Urgent Issue"). In December 1967, he left the country in a protest against Francisco Franco's dictatorship censor on him and his program channel, TVE. In Bolivia, he directed a similar program, "En carne viva" (lit. "In living flesh"), a series of 20-minute documentaries for Televisión Boliviana (TVB). The show lasted from 1970 to 1971, when Espinal was sent off from TVB because he interviewed the Ñancahuazú Guerrilla. He was a film professor at the Higher University of San Andrés and the Universidad Católica Boliviana, and worked for Radio Fides. Espinal was also a film critic for the newspapers "Presencia", "Última hora" and "Aquí", a member of film company Ukamu, and wrote ten books about cinema. He gained Bolivian citizenship in 1970, and was one of the most informed critics of film, television and radio in the country. He was murdered in La Paz, in 1980, by a Bolivian-government death squad.