La Voz de Galicia – May 31, 2026 →
I’m one of those people who always stop to read the commemorative plaques on buildings in cities—those that say “so-and-so lived here” or “so-and-so died here.” The kind of person who, after reading the plaque, then looks up the name of the person being commemorated, because often those plaques mention people I know nothing about, and through them a door opens onto a reality I was unaware of. I’m also one of those people who, once that door is opened, can’t stop, and suddenly I become obsessed with the people on the plaques in my neighborhood (like Jane Jacobs or Emma Lazarus), and I dive deep into whatever literature there is about them. And then, after that initial infatuation, I forget them—just as we forget the plaques that, even though they are there every day, we stop seeing, reading, or paying attention to.
I was thinking about that the other day, at one of those photography exhibitions I go to with Xan, which remind me that history is full of people with fascinating stories that are not always visible. The exhibition was about the evolution of photo editing in celebrity photography, and it included actors and actresses from the early twentieth century. Among them was the incredible Hedy Lamarr, one of the icons of 1930s and 1940s cinema, but also an inventor who, together with the pianist and composer George Antheil, patented a secret communication system based on frequency hopping, which in some way forms the basis of today’s communications. Suddenly I remembered that, years ago, I had also become obsessed with her, and that I’ve spent my whole life like this—finding a spark, a plaque, a name that leads me to become interested in something for a while, and then continuing to follow that powerful, invisible thread that has become the engine (and medicine) of my life: curiosity.
