More than 10 years ago I regularly attended the Jiménez Díaz Hospital and many times a boy who didn´t go unnoticed in the corridors of the hospital was there. He would not be much older than me, but his body had surrendered. Just had hair, and suffered morbid obesity. His features were anesthetized by the cocktail of drugs that they should give him, and I had not bet that he was able to speak, to reason or even to remember.

Everyone who saw him felt a shiver, and that visceral need to get away from what disgusts us, as if we were going to became infected with his ugliness, his fatness or his madness. I could not stop glancing furtively at him with that morbid curiosity that inspires us what we dislike and fascinates us at the same time.

One day, during one of my furtive glances, I realized that this kind of monster we all looked at and rejected was an acquaintance of mine, from childhood. I couldn´t believe it. The transformation was amazing, but I had no doubt it was him. It was Roberto.

I remembered then how was Roberto many years ago. A normal guy, somewhat shy and with a huge heart. A kind and beautiful person, of which there was nothing in the being who stood in front of me. At that moment, something very strange happened inside my brain. As if both realities can not exist at the same time, the dantesque Roberto I was seeing seemed to me a shell that concealed and isolated that wonderful person than I remembered from the world.

With my project Roberto I want to show the two overlapping realities that coexist in my head, where the same person can be both a mass of wilted flesh and a beautiful being living in a dream world. That incidentally way to transcend from the horrifying reality to a fantasy universe involved an unusual and wonderful event to me, that made my life began to change.

We all have experienced times in which we find reality unbearable, in which we wonder if the misery we see and happens to us is all that this world has in store for us, and even toy with self-destructive ideas in search of some relief. My encounter with Roberto happened in one of those times, and the window my imagination opened to a place where stigmatized beings, as Roberto or even me, could be happy and free meant a great relief to me, and a resource that today continues following me.

Roberto became a comic that was never released or submitted to any competition, because of that story had to wait for the right moment in which I was able to tell it properly. After more than 10 years, and without Roberto has never ceased to be the story I want to tell, at last the perfect conditions have been given. Both Roberto and I have matured, we have enought time and we are prepared to tell this story together, in which he puts up the harsh reality and I put the madness that makes him free.

So this is the way I see that monster that lived in the hallways and waiting rooms of that Hospital.

To commemorate this important moment, when I’ve finally been able to share Roberto with all of  you, and thank you for the support and love that you make me come … I’m preparing something very special that I hope you like it. Very soon I will give you a surprise! hehehe