In recent years, whenever he passed through Alicante or nearby, he visited our lifelong coach.
I wanted to know about him in the first person.
He had sneaked around the corner of the popularity stage.
I rescued him for all of us who loved him from Madrid.
Pedro Ferrándiz made a lot of noise while he was in his world, however, when he sensed the moment —”light luggage, almost naked like the children of the sea”— he secluded himself in his native Alicante, where he sensed his universal origin, surrounded by his friends Luís del Castillo and Toni Cabot, the lady who took care of him and his small family.
His face, always on guard, relaxed with the reflection of the Mediterranean Sea that he claimed as his own, and from hospitality he made his flag for the people who loved him.
There, on his terrace, the character Ferrándiz surrendered to the close, friendly, almost familiar Pedro, if that were possible.
As a prodigal father he decided to exercise in a way that he had never been before.
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Pedro Ferrándiz, legend of the Real Madrid basketball bench, dies
I saw him five or six times, we reviewed our life together, we remembered many moments and we believed to fix life, the world, basketball, while his rice with chicken and rabbit became a spiritual manna that took us back to those years of immense happiness .
Happiness and requirement.
Pedro was always very special, and faithful to his authenticity, he has also been so at the moment of his death, away from everything and everyone.
He was always very demanding, in sports and relationships, and we all respected him, as if respect was the way of loving us, the way of loving him.
We always had the feeling of not reaching the minimum to deserve his recognition.
Always a challenger, he made each situation a duel where only one could win, and it was not good to beat him.
But with time, which heals everything, he dropped the revolver and made her open her hand.
An open hand that was offered as if he needed to recover the warmth of other hands, of the hugs that were left to give in so many years.
In the farewell, the person imposes himself on the character, becoming for us the father he never wanted to be.
Releasing the emotions that he never wanted to express and the love that he contained towards us, towards life sprouting as an essence as a tribute, as the blood tie that he always needed and that today unites us forever in our memory.
Forced to look ahead, today I look back —we look back— to look at the past and see you with nostalgia, and let you occupy our minds, but above all our hearts.
Wherever you are, I know you will feel us with you, just as you will not abandon us as long as the last of us remembers that short coach who insisted on not loving us.
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