If the writer Delibes taught me how to look, the actor Fern\u00e1n-G\u00f3mez taught me how to listen.<\/p>\n\n
For several years I had the privilege of being close to him and listening to him.<\/p>\n\n
Listening to him tell, among many others, the story of Fernanda L\u00f3pez, \u201cthe blonde\u201d, his great-grandmother, from whom he inherited his hair colour and who came from Valdelaguna, a village near Chinch\u00f3n, mine. And of Carolina G\u00f3mez, a seamstress, the grandmother who cared for his childhood just as Natividad L\u00f3pez, with her needlework, cared for mine.<\/p>\n\n
We exchanged and shared coincidences in many other stories.<\/p>\n\n
Stories of survival, of absences, fears, hopes, dreams: of freedom, of \u201cbecoming someone\u201d, of being \u2014 why not? \u2014 Jackie Cooper, \u201cthe one from Treasure Island\u201d, and also a \u201cwriter of Salgari novels\u201d.<\/p>\n\n
Firm, proudly resolved in his melancholy, Fernando\u2019s voice would sound as he recalled those times, as he recalled himself.<\/p>\n\n
Echoes of Baroja, Gald\u00f3s, Barea\u2026 wandered through that memory.<\/p>\n\n
And through Fernando\u2019s voice, I could also imagine the voices of his grandmother and mine, the distant voice of Carola, his mother; that of Mar\u00eda, the illiterate maid who loved poetry; that of Florentina and her boyfriend\u2019s \u201cdamn, what legs\u201d.<\/p>\n\n
The voice of the dreaming child, the young extra with his handful of dried chestnuts in his pocket, the young man in love and in a hurry, in such a hurry\u2026<\/p>\n\n
Many voices in a single voice.<\/p>\n\n
I hope you will listen to me with the same, or a similar, emotion with which I listened to him,<\/p>\n\n
the grandson of the seamstress,<\/p>\n\n
the son of the actress.<\/p>\n\n
Jos\u00e9 Sacrist\u00e1n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n