First
encounter: When I was small. I was standing in line at school waiting for a game
of football when I was, unjustly, told off for not having short sleeves. Alone
in the school, after saying angrily that I would never play football again, I
wandered through some corridors that I never normally visited... and there they
were, minerals, awaiting me. Behind the old and dirty glass, identified by old,
fallen off, and almost impossible to read labels, stuck between the fossils, teeth,
remains of old experiments and a dried out frog. Nothing great, of course: pyrite,
calcite, flint, some quartz (maybe it was a Montseny amethyst) and the inevitable
Iceland spar doubling up the line beneath it .... But it was them and they were
studying me closely and saying "we will get you and you will never get free of
us". That's how it was.
Second encounter: I was
young, in full flush of youth and taking pleasure in the personal freedom that
I have never had since; among many journeys and trips I had the opportunity to
cross the Sahara between Morocco and Cameroon. And what did I find whenever
I moved? Minerals, minerals and even more minerals. In the little tents set up
in front of each house in Morocco, in the corners of each Kasbah in Algeria,
full of desert roses and volcanic bombs, in the immense petrified forests of
Nigeria, and in the huts of Cameroon there were minerals everywhere and they
forced you to stop the journey. With all the weight they added the vehicle finally
broke down and with the difficulties we had in getting it going again the journey
overran by two weeks, time which I used to visit the interior of Cameroon on
foot, get to know the people and discover nature beyond all comparison.
Third
encounter: Very few minerals got home, as they were lost as we traveled the difficult
road of vehicle repairs, but after letting Jordi - my brother - know about all
the baggage we decided to make other journeys looking for and capturing
minerals. But Jordi was different. While he was wrapped up in his biology studies,
he began to show a deep devotion and also began to see a way to earn his daily
bread. So we had a curious symbiosis - sometimes explosive - that led us to many
legendary locations (Mibladen, Panasqueira, Áliva, Riotinto, Bou-Azzer,
Eugui, La Collada, Cunha Baixa...), and to live through many unrepeatable situations
and changes. It was a very intense time, which diluted the rhythm of my new family
obligations and increased Jordi's professionalism, as, little by little, he became
Fabre Minerals.
Fourth
encounter: After many years of increasing distance between us, minerals found me again. Given my specialization
in graphic arts, in the branch of graphic and digital composition, Jordi felt that I could help him as
his web pages were going through their post natal stages. This 'help' transformed itself into being 'a
part of the team', so once again I was back as the minerals' prisoner. I could not get away from them,
every day they were in front of me demanding even more attention, continually showing and hiding their
thousands of faces. They were enigmatic beings, playful and obstinate, not letting their prisoner get
away easily ... but, what could one do! For all that, I loved them.
