When Blas de Otero died (June 29, 1979), one of the great Spanish poets of internal exile, I was traveling to Quarteira, a beautiful Portuguese enclave. I recited it because it was easy to memorize, very simple, and then it embodied some of the obsessions of those of us who believed that freedom lay elsewhere.
He was essential, so much so that he made one of his verses a leitmotif of political meetings. So we boys, whether journalists or not, distinguished ourselves here by being unkempt in soul, in ideas and in beards, so that I had the face to suddenly appear in the anti demonstrations.