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beloved father, my friend and mentor. I remember the smell of his stinking, black tobacco, for which he had a passion. He particularly liked long, thin cigars, similar to those blended in Tuscany, which we in Catalonia call
caliquenyes
; in no time at all a room would reek so foully from the stench that we would all be forced to leave, so he usually did his best to smoke them out of doors where he would not inconvenience those around him. He frequently tried to give them up, but never succeeded.He was eventually so poisoned by them that they contributed in no small way to his death.
    I remember too his love of cards, a distraction which he particularly enjoyed on Sunday afternoons. His favourite game was Manilla, for which four people were needed. The group usually consisted of my father; a family friend; the headmaster of the local secondary school, who was a priest called Mossen Josep; and myself. Eventually, my father decided that my brother and I should attend Mossen Josep’s school. But if the truth be told, I soon found both the school and its headmaster extremely tedious. The lessons seemed endless and dull and I attended them most unwillingly. After three years there I had become a hefty fellow of fifteen, with an incipient beard. Soon I was shaving and thought myself every inch a man. Going out with girls accounted for a fair bit of my time and the rest I devoted to sports, gymnastics and hiking.
    One day I had a row with one of my teachers: he had it in for me and I didn’t think much of him. I came home and told my father that I did not want to stay at school any longer. He took my decision calmly and replied that if I was not going to study anymore, I must get a job. I accepted the challenge and went to work in a hardware shop in the old Carrer Comte d’el Asalto, in the old quarter of Barcelona near the famous promenade or
Rambla
.
    As an apprentice, I had to keep the shop clean, run errands and return to their rightful places all those tools which the shop assistants left out on the counters after they had shown them to prospective clients. Gradually, the dreariness of the routine and the hard work involved in having to sweep out such huge premises every day undermined my show of bravado. I gave up my job.
    I decided I wanted to read for an arts degree and began to spend hours in my father’s library. In particular, I was fascinated by the origins of words and spent my days perusing book after book. It was during this period that my appendix burst and Iwas rushed into the hospital, as I have already explained. When I had recovered from the operation, I decided not to read for an arts degree after all, but to become a chicken farmer. I made up my mind to enter the Royal Poultry School at Arenys de Mar as soon as I was well enough.
    It was 1931, General Primo de Rivera’s long dictatorship had ended and a new government had been sworn in under General Berenguer, who had promised democracy and municipal elections.
    Most of the large cities voted Republican, but in the country people voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Monarchist Party. Despite being in the minority, the Republicans claimed a victory because they had gained the cities and the provincial capitals. To avoid bloodshed, King Alfonso XIII left the country, but without formally abdicating. Power was then transferred into the hands of the centrist leader of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora.
    All I could make out from the tangled web of proclamations , announcements and acclamations that followed was that Spain’s stability was swiftly coming to an end. It seemed to me that those who had endured a dictatorship backed by the king were now in revolt against the prevailing judicial and national unity. My father had a premonition that hard days were looming over the horizon for his countrymen, which worried him greatly. However, as fate would have it, he never knew what followed, for he died a few months after the birth of the Second Republic in