I was born in this incredible place (!!!) :

which is called Avila. Famous writer Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada (also known as Saint Teresa or Teresa de Jesús by catholics), who became the first female doctor Honoris Causa in Salamanca University, was also born in this city. Teresa escaped from her parents home when being a child and, once she arrived to the place from where the above photograph was taken (called "Los cuatro postes"), she and her brother were found by her uncle, who took them back. She left Avila some years later and again when arriving at "Los cuatro postes" she looked at Avila, took her shoes off, shook them and said:

From Avila, I don't even want the dust!


Teresa was heading for Salamanca, the site of one of the oldest universities in Europe. In Spain there is a said:

If you want to learn, go to Salamanca !

So, when I was sixteen I left Avila, shook my shoes at "Los cuatro postes" to get rid of the dust, and went to Salamanca to study Physics. I became a graduate in 1982 --I was 21 then, snif :'-<, not any more! --, and then I did also my Ph. D. on Relativity and Gravitation at Salamanca University.

I became a doctor in 1986.


I was so popular at all Salamanca's bars and night places that, thinking of becoming a respectable person, I had to leave heading to somewhere where nobody could know me. Then, even though I had had an intense life in Salamanca, I realized the following

If you want to live and enjoy it, go to London !

So, I went. I spent two wonderful years in London, where I did a postdoc at the Theoretical Astronomy Unit of the School of Mathematical Sciences of the Queen Mary College. My life there was terrific, but it seems that all good things in life come to an end. Thus, I went back to Spain in 1989 trying to become a respectable physicist with a permanent position. Definitely, I was getting older... I keep going to London regularly, but anyway I still miss it very much.

If you are tired of London, you are tired of life !


Luckily enough, I soon got a permanent position at Barcelona University. Barcelona is another wonderful and very beautiful city, with all mediterranean tradition behind.

Barcelona: a liberal place to live in!!


From1990 to 2000 I lived and worked in Barcelona, where I formed part of the  the relativity research group .

All in all, I left the dust of Avila but I eventually ended up working in the dusty and very noisy Diagonal avenue in Barcelona. See by yourself: 


However, I wanted to become a truly respectable scientist, so I became full professor in theoretical physics in the Basque Country University, at Bilbao. So, now I am a member of its Department of Theoretical Physics. Placed on the river Ibaizabal (or Nervión), being centre to a handful of other towns along the same river (forming what is called the great Bilbao), Bilbao, the biggest town in the Basque Country, is a wonderful and highly developing city nowadays, with a well-known and famous cuisine and several important new cultural or tourist attractions. The most famous and impressive one, of course, is the Guggenheim Bilboko Museoa, of which you can take a look in the following pictures at night.


 

But there are some other less famous but nonetheless interesting and attractive places. Take a look:


 

After all, as is well known, "bilboers" are born wherever they like !