"In this book of portraits all of them are loveable –amables –, which means –according to the Royal Spanish Academy– inspiring or deserving love or affection ... at least for me. Celebrities will appear mixed with anonymous people, exalted artists with carpenters ... and all of them come out to me adorable, likable, worth to be loved, amables.

    I have met almost all of them personally, but I could not resist the temptation to talk about some, like Gaudí or Mariano Fortuny, who I couldnt know, although would be a huge pleasure.

    I've given up to provide objective and biographical data –so easy to find on the Internet– all writing is personal, subjective and somewhat arbitrary

    I've had many doubts on how to order the different texts (professions, alphabetically... ) and finally I have done it in the order they were written (although all have been modified later on), it seemed to me the least bad solution (although my ideas are persistent we must take into account that the first text dates twenty years ago).

    The sixteen texts without original date have been written expressly for this edition".

    OTB

    May 2014