A big hug and see you soon, Fernando!

So that was it. While we were immerged in this worldly institutional whirl, you came to remind us that the world keeps going round basically on its own. Moves that come even to our small but yet great unesquian island. The day came, and as scheduled you left for a new stage in your life, to La Habana.

This kind of life we chose to live presents us with opportunities for extraordinary meetings, but it also implies, from time to time, deeply felt farewells. There is no one without the other. With time one gets used to it and develops a sort of shield. Also with time one improves one’s ability to differentiate important people from simple passers-by. Yet no shield can contain what one feels when a true friend leaves, especially when one has a crystal heart. Fernando, thanks for knowing how to listen as good as you know how to talk. Thanks for sharing so many interesting things with me. Thanks for helping me in my effort to see beyond myself. And thanks for sharing your enormous sense of humor, which is no other thing than a supreme form of intelligence. Thanks for being both a gentleman and a wise person. And thanks for allowing me to call you a friend.

I will miss you, compay! But well, we will meet again sooner than later, with a mojito if possible, be it travelling from the Old Europe or from somewhere else. I wish you all the best for the new life you begin, from which I hope to be a distant but yet present part. Or future part. Well, it was understood, wasn’t it?

PS: the most sentimental part I leave it, if you allow me, to someone from Uruguay, Mr. Jaime Roos.