Abstract

This time our Cover Page has an exceptional character. It’s occupied by two pieces of the one who was the most important “ninotaire” (drawer of intelligent humor) of our country. Francesc Vila i Rufas, known by everyone as Cesc (1927-2006). Both drawings stand out by their unmistakable characteristics of simplicity and, at the same time, of argumental greatness, which made us title this commentary as “Playing in the street”. I will start remembering my precarious childhood and first youth experience in this activity of “suburban” nature. Many are the people of my age who at some point of their first early years have played in the streets. I remember the first time that I did it was around 1938, in Sant Boi de Llobregat (named Vilaboi back then), playing soccer. I spent a few months in this town escaping from them bombs which were falling on Barcelona. It was also back then, or maybe one or two years later, I had the desire, which I haven’t been able to satisfy, of sliding on one of those wooden artifacts with ball bearing wheels on the street of Enric Granados, where I lived (they were built by the boys of the neighborhood, in rudimentary ways, which would now resemble a scooter or a skateboard). During baccalaureate, when I left the Escuala Pia of Balmes with Travesera de Gracia, sometimes I had also played soccer in Tuset Street, which was not properly urbanized back then and had really wide sidewalks without paving. In the first years of medicine career, I participated in continuous and never ending soccer games that, since first hour in the morning and until noon, were organized daily in the cloistered playground of the Faculty. We generally played between classes, although there was a nucleus of enthusiast soccer players who didn’t get in the classrooms at any moment. This competition finished when the Dean decided to adorn the playground with different flower pots which still remain.