Alejandro Finisterre : Galician Inventor of Table football or futbolín (7/5/19 - 9/2/07)

 Alejandro Campos Ramírez anarchist poet  and inventor of the Spanish table football  was born on  May the 7th in 1919,in Finisterre, Galicia, one of 10 children of the telegraphist at the lighthouse at "the end of the world"  The family moved to A Coruña when Alejandro was five years old, and he left to study in the Spanish capital at the age of 15. It was apparent from a very early age that Alejandro would lead an extraordinary life. While at  school his headmaster put the teenage Alejandro to correcting the younger students’ homework in order to pay his school fees, when his father’ who had become went bankrupt. He  would go on to lead an adventurous life, working as a labourer, in a print shop, and even as a tap dancer in the company of Celia Gamez..

It was on the outbreak of the Spanish civil war in 1936, in Madrid where he was editing a literary magazine, ‘Paso a la juventud. his political idealism was realised, and when he first met the poet Leon Felipe, whose hatred of bourgeois society and his belief that poetry could revolutionise an unjust world Finisterre shared.

However, Finisterre, who lived in an anarchist stronghold in Madrid,, 17 at the time, was severely injured after a nationalist bomb exploded on his house and left him under the rubble in November 1936, at the height of the Spanish Civil war.

He was rescued and dragged from the rubble and evacuated, first to Valencia and finally in  Barcelona. where was taken to recuperate from his injuries in the Colonia  Puig de Montserrat hospital. Recovering, he saw many injured children, unable to play football with their friends. Being a lover of table tennis, Finisterre thought that if would play a kind of mini tennis with rackets and a green table, the same could be done with football and And so, inspired by the idea of table tennis, set about building a table football pitch or futbolín as it was called in Spain with  with a Basque carpenter called Francisco Javier Altuna,  using pine wood and steel bars created  a game even inured or disabled people could play.

A German, Broto Wachter, had invented a version of the game in 1930, but Finisterre used the realistic figures that are known worldwide today. On the advice of a local anarchist, Finisterre patented his invention in Barcelona in 1937. He also patented a foot-pedal that enabled musicians to turn the pages of their scores.

Fleeing to France at the end of the war, Finisterre's patent turned to pulp in pouring rain. Back in Spain, he completed a philosophy degree, but left for Paris in 1947.It was when he was in Paris in 1948 that Alejandro Finisterre heard that a friend from the hospital in Cataluña had patented the futbolín and it was being manufactured by a company in France. He claimed his right to the patent, and emigrated to Ecuador with the money he received from the company.
He founded the poetry magazine, Ecuador 0º 0’ 0”, and met the Guatemalan Ambassador at an event which was organised to present the magazine, who asked him to produce his invention in Guatemala. Alejandro Finisterre left for Guatemala in 1952, where his futbolín was hand-made in mahogany by indigenous peoples. His business went well – he even played some games against Che Guevara during that time – until the military coup in 1954, when Finisterre was kidnapped by Franco agents and put on a plane to Panama, with the aim of taking him back to Madrid. He managed to gain his freedom by wrapping a bar of soap from the toilets in silver paper as if it were a bomb, and shouting out, ‘I am a Spanish refugee, they’ve kidnapped me, and I know how to stop this plane arriving at its destination if I have to!’ This early act of air piracy won the support of crew and passengers and Finisterre was let off the plane in Panama.

For the next 20 years, Finisterre published in Mexico City more than 200 books of Latin American non-fiction and poetry and the work of Spanish exiles especially Galicians "I published what was forgotten by commercial publishers," .he said.

He returned to Spain after Franco’s death, and became the leading authority on his late friend, Leon Felipe who had died in Mexico City in 1968.Finisterre moved to Felipe's  home town of Zamora  The town  council promised to open a museum, when it didn't,  Finisterre in a final battle, polemicised in articles that the poet;s neglected legacy was decaying  in damp boxes, The situation became symbolic  of how "official "  Spain had ignored its exiled culture.

His enthusiasm for what he was doing and his drive,contrasted with many accounts of his very deep shyness.He also downplayed the fact that he had  been the creator of the wold famous football game. " Bah,, If I hadn't invented it, someone else would have invented it,"  

Though Finisterre himself wrote poetry, he thought of them as "just verses"  He considered like Jean Cocteau that "Poetry is always necessary, I don't know for what, but it's necessary." 

 A restless and combative cultural agitator, he dedicated his life to promoting other people's work. Now best remembered as the creator of a simple game for children which is still the most widely used in modern times, that continues to bring sustenance to a generation of young people, who are broken,and impacted by conflicts and war across the world, the popularity for Finisterre's invention has not gone away,

Alejandro Finisterre died a month away from his 88th birthday, on 9th February 2007 at his home in Zamora. His ashes were scattered in the Duero River as it flows through Zamora, and in the Atlantic, off the coast of his homeland at the end of the world, Finisterre.