My first contacts with the smoke were in Oviedo. I am speaking of street of Uría, where it lived and where we crossed road hundreds of times to day, where we played until the dusk justice and thieves and can who until a the hen blinds... just as now, you show the nose by a negligence or losses a little the foot and " zas " already are you " segao ". Before me house was a position of cucherías run by Eladia (one viellína with aspect of witch, untidy, with the long and straight hairs that fell on the pies milhojas and apples roxias that with a palito and greased of caramel, a pile desired. Always there were wasps, many wasps, me medical father me had it prohibited and I sighed by the manzanitas with palín, contemporary of the pirulí of Havana and precursors of chupachús present. Next to the slapdash store. " Yes, man, I am speaking of the street of Uría "... there was " prao ", called the bolera, next to the mud wall of the Station of the North was seves there, where we took refuge and as far as me, the family could not watch me; there I ignited my first cigarettes of " good Grass "... of dry seeds that in the meadow she had in abundance; sometimes we smoked cigarrines authentic, chorizados in the drawers of a table of my father, pediatra that never smoked and that the Asturian ones - generous always they insisted on giving pure and small boxes to him. Only there was the one in exception day of its santo, came other relatives, such as D. Aniceto Sela (it illustrates Asturian wise person - it comes in the Enciclopedías -). I decide that she had a venerable figure with long white beards, I to Me I saw him in Salt mines, where they had an enormous property, to anywhere take the toads, to put them in purse (as he is said in Asturian) and to scatter them by the orchard-garden... their children Jose (for the Pepín family), engineer head of the Port of Avilés, their brother Luis (dean of the Faculty of Right)... then, always insisted on the same. Manuel, you have fumarte unfailingly a rich Habano of yours... every year to pure means, began to feel been annoying and to the bed...

As it exists as much Asturian in Leon I say to them where it lived, it is easy, in the Revolution of Asturias in the 34, they put a pump to us in the elevator and the house is almost burned. They were the miners by that of the " fight of classes ". And in the 36 defenders of Oviedo they already placed a " military powder magazine " in the cellars of the house and a good day flew and we remained " to see them come ". By the way in the Revolution of the 34 I knew what was " the vice ". They got worse the shots, from the Naranco, the library of my father, it seemed a strainer... the books jumped facts pieces and we did not have another option that to lower to the cellar, the food was scarce and the regular ones did not arrive... Those of Saenz de Miera I believe that they were called (flour manufacturers), they did not have tobacco, they were excited nerves... My mother commentd out in low voice, I believe that nor husband (then we were without my father and my older sister, and I was a guaje) has pure ones... He had pronounced these words not well, when those of Míera " that concerned the life to them " raised all gas, made storing of all the tobacco that fished. " our mother Is You ". Mrs. You is... while with eyes of thanked for dog and tears in the eyes, they watched entranced my mother; they pricked the pure ones doing cigarettes " kept the butts for the future "... was comedian and for my, it was a course, one more an education.

I believe that when flew our house, died of the expansive wave and the civil governor, then we in the pueblecito of Cisneros of Field were all, where my father was born and of where he is minister Zapatero.

Miraculously, between the ruins of our floor in the 36, they appeared insurancies policy (between two siccatives, that they preserved to them of the humidity) that once allowed in Valladolid to finish the Baccalaureate me and to make the race of Medicine at that time smoked very sporadically. In an occasion and being present at in the Amphitheatre of Anatomy the opening of a corpse, when opening the thorax, left same (apparently it was a smoker) a stench, so unbearable, that I raised the stop of the window and breathed deep, deep and I swore not to return to smoke more never. They are I impress these that without a doubt are marking. In Madrid doing some subjets of the sixth of Medicine and Race of Odontolgy, that if I finished, I did not smoke anything. And to finish and already to complete the tribulaciones of a small smoker through its life. Leon 45 years or more of exercise... I became partner of the Industrial Recreation (chess section). How mother smoked itself in the Recreation " how she smoked myself ". I could not less be... I arrived until the 6 daily cigarettes " an authentic record ". And I giving advice in my clinic... he could not be... I recognize that I used the most infantile hairs-splitting, such as to throw the small box at the top of the closet and to delay desire, to be gorrón, the thing is not to take the small box (as they say in my earth) " in purse ". " the will does not give pa as much ". Memory a game of chess championship in which my opponent, who smoked two small boxes, yes, yes, one after another one, but depends much on the rapidity of the absorbed one... that suddenly disappeared surrounded in smoke and seemed the invisible man. Strategy, to navigate... nervousness on the contrary, or to perhaps make dance to the neurons? The doubtless thing is that the nicotine excites. Fruit of my fight, is the 20 years without smoking, after having broken more of a cigarette with rage and not smoking it (it is a good system). Then, inasmuch as now I find out to me by a medical magazine that the smokers suffer in smaller proportion the disease of Alhzaimer or senile dementia. Mother, with whom we know.

Good she excuses this. Then to whom it does not like to throw a whistle once in a while, in a wedding, a succulent food... Under my facultative prescription, an intermediate form... three cigarrines daily after the main meals thus can that you do not have the " dementia " and can that nonlame diseases you would crown or pulmonary, etc., but when I was more I content, the news in the newspaper, the nicotine in the potato, the eggplant, the coliflor come. " This yes that is good " with that I in my life ate, with which I like, only lack that adds to the chick-peas and fabes and to die.

Nothing, I stand in three cigarettes, and if I survive this, I will already count it. Amen.