I met Fernando as a child, when he came to the Cinc Claus farmhouse in a Mercedes that carried a pirate flag replacing the traditional insignia of the brand. My father and he were great friends until the last moment. Not only did they share the mythical gatherings of Encounters with letters either the world by montera, but the affinity and mutual respect of those who were part of a clique, which I was able to enter a long time later, as a follower of a culture that is ending. I have not met anyone with the vocabulary of Sánchez Dragó, nor a lady who seduced so much with the power of words.
Fernando was an entertainer and an agitator, a fictionalizer of his own life, with a charisma to match his ego. Sincere, deep and never superficial. To talk with him was to open an endless book. He knew everything because he brought together and spread culture like few others. Adventurer and storyteller, he could tell you how in Bangkok they hired him in a porno show to excite the crowd or how he spent his days in jail for defending progressivism. Politics is a hoax that entangles everything, and we would do well to keep the best of people.
sanchez drago
To talk with him was to open an endless book
For me you were a mentor, a man who taught me the value of friendship and living life to the full. Thanks to you, we have that incalculable legacy of some gatherings that gutted the established order and low culture, to raise the level to the prohibited and countercultural. You dared to set up a program with Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, and allow other states of consciousness, parallel universes, fallen angels, tantra, alchemy or science to be discussed on a public channel hidden. You did it by giving voice to Jiménez del Oso, Antonio Escohotado, Mario Satz, Luis Racionero, Fernando Savater or that great white wizard named Andrés Malby. They were your horsemen of the apocalypse that ended the morality of an old dictatorship, and you were the spokesperson.
Today I feel that a world is ending, a way of understanding culture is coming to an end, but the works, the words and the attitude remain. None of that should be missed. The underground will not die, no matter how much ideologies try to entangle it. The territory is the planet, not the navel. Culture is not the established but the curiosity to explore and question. Fernando, you were the great dragon, the one who enjoys almost immortal energy, as custodian of the universe and the most sacred places. The watchman and diffuser of a culture that taught us that life, like that hero’s journey that we share so many times, is to be lived to the full, without repression or cover. The pleasures of the flesh, good reading and the passion for travel fill our vital path because theory is not enough.
I imagine you now in your refuge in Kampot, in that simple enclave where we met away from the madding crowd. There was no more luxury than your conversation and the reunion with friendship. Wise words go with you, but the legacy of a generation that survives thanks to you remains.
Rest easy, dragon, we will not let the flame of freedom go out.
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