No nation had wanted to report the true number of deaths. Only Spain, who had remained neutral in the conflict, shared news of the illness, which is why it ended up being called the Spanish influenza.

Her eternal illness is the reason for my good health; in order to avoid following in her footsteps, I’ve lived my life proudly ignoring any and all ailments. That’s how I learned that, in general, things clear up on their own.

The journey of life has long and tedious stretches, step by step, day by day, without anything exciting happening, but memory is made up of the unexpected events that mark your course.

That’s how I spent my adolescence, our period of Exile, which I remember as the most diaphanous time of my life.

He said that tools and manual labor were the common language of men and that there were no barriers to communication when two men worked side by side.

No one gives you anything in life, Teresa would say, you have to take it by force, and as soon as you get careless they’ll take it back.

The rural women taught me that courage is contagious and that there’s strength in numbers; what you can’t do on your own can be achieved together, the more the better.

There’s a time to live and a time to die. In between there’s time to remember.

implacable,