In an alternative timeline, shortly after my arrival in Basel in 1995, I met an old Spanish poet who had lived here since 1936, when he escaped from capture in Granada by the nationalist militia and found refuge in Switzerland. He hadcontinued to write poems and plays, and had also written four novels and a study of Spanish poets and the Spanish Civil War. In 1956, he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. We spoke German, Federico and I, but I started learning Spanish in order to read his works in the original. In 1998, shortly after his 100th birthday, he died peacefully in his house beside the Rhine. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 July 2025)