Inventar en el desierto

In Piedrabuena (Ciudad Real), more than a hundred years ago very rare things happened: someone called Sánchez left to the United States and when he returned he stablished a revolutionary factory in his village (it was revolutionary because it made devices so he could see the people within and because he was paying fair salaries; one of these two things is revolutionary still today). These years the monomania of designing and making the perfect submarine spread among scientists: with periscope or without it, using a propeller or using arms, whether it was to reconquer the Empire or to go fishing for shellfish. Such a thing, in the cases of Peral, Monturiol and others, ended up in a shipwreck, though they had Julio Verne on their side. We cannot forget a wise person called Cervera who, as far as we know, might well have invented the radio. And when it comes to innovation, there’s no one like that priest of Segorbe (Castellón) who composed electronic music and designed synthesizers; and this happened while Franco made his walkabouts under a canopy.

They were not saints, nor visionaries, nor madmen: they were Spanish geniuses. And they were geniuses right in the middle of nowhere, or in a country that greeted them as if they were kings and forgot them as if they were beggars.

Such a story deserves to be told and read «€¦ even if it is only not to repeat the past.