The Museum of Prado Some of the names, places, or situations and dates appearing in these pages have been made into a novel deliberately to protect certain sensitive sources of information and doing like this more accessible its content. Thus, the references and pieces of information relating to the art or literary works, their authors and their context respond to the truth, if such a thing exists when we talk about History. This story begins at the first colds in December in 1990. I have doubted very much, so much about the convenience of publishing it, especially because it is about an adventure with strong and personal connotations. It is, all in all, the little story about how an apprentice writer was taught to watch a painting. As it happens with all the great human ups and downs, mine also starts in a moment of crisis. At that beginning of decade, I was a young lad from a province town who was nineteen, newcomer to Madrid who dreamt of making his way in a city full of opportunities. Everything swarmed around me, and I had the impression that the future of our generation started to draw faster from what we were able to perceive. The preparations for The Olympic Games in Barcelona, the Universal Exposition in Seville, the construction of the first high-speed train, the appearance of tree new national newspapers or the arriving of the private TV was the most visible part of that swarm. And as I was sure that some of those exterior transformations were going to finish affecting me, nothing of that resulted important to me. Being naive, I believed the possibility of gaining a place in the world of communication – which the one I have been flirting with it since I was a child – I was at the gates. In fact, since I settled in the capital I did my best to visit radio stations, TV sets, press conferences, book launches, editorial departments, in order to meet journalists I admired as long as getting the idea of what were going to be my profession.