There are names that summarize times. Sometimes they do it with such spectacular precision that they seem to recover the sensations lived in past times. As a mechanism that is activated in some remote place of memory and opens the door to remember images or sounds that seemed forgotten. They are even associated with the arrival of color television, in an analogy that, in some societies, could extend far beyond the cathodic box. Those names, sometimes, go further and suggest sensations even to people with whom they did not coincide in time. The former basketball player and doctor is one of them. His personal and professional career symbolizes as few the most recent history in Spain. Born in Madrid in full dictatorship, the son of a republican pilot, he began playing basketball – he was part of the generation that premiered the Minibasket in the early 60s. Real Madrid signed it in 1970 and the path of Spanish basketball – and, in parallel, that of the country – was about to enter a phase of opening and improvement that would culminate 14 years later with the historic silver medal at the Los Angeles Olympic Games. In the middle, dozens of titles – 12 Leagues and three European glasses between them – and the incomparable revenue granted by the charism.
(JC) is the book in which he shares his memoirs. He has a prologue of Manuel Vicent and epilogue of David Trueba. A fantastic volume – with a lot of basketball, but also music, books or cinema – that helps to understand an era and leaves suggestive images. Like that of the young corbalán moving from the four streets of his neighborhood to a completely new world and a few hours of rest to combine sport and university; The phrase of that veteran before the rush to arrive: “You do not know what I would give to be in the corner. From there you can come to the center; from where I am alone you go to the street”; or the San Viator shirt he carried in his suitcase for Los Angeles. There, in a Spain that no longer existed, he had started playing basketball.
