Engraver, writer and incurable self-learner. This is the story of how I got here.
I was born in Barcelona in 1981 and grew up in Seville. As a kid, I was the one who didn't fit in: alone in a corner of the schoolyard, grinding sand between my hands while the other kids played football, and failing every subject that required memorizing. At thirteen I left school — and it was the best thing that ever happened to me, because a workshop and a master were waiting: Juan, my stepfather, the man I call my father. He put a graver in my hand and taught me that life isn't something you think about. It's something you build.
I've been building ever since, always down unusual roads. I earned my diplomas alone, as an adult, studying at my kitchen table — memorizing nothing, because I can't: understanding everything instead. I worked as a gardener. I became a programmer. And I got obsessed with an American art form almost nobody in Spain had heard of, the hobo nickel, until my coins — hand-engraved, push-graving only, signed Ignacio Fayol in Juan's honor — ended up in collections around the world.
I also fell. A divorce, my father's death and my mother's illness, all at once, left me back at square one in my thirties. I bought the cheapest, most ruined house I could find, in Olivares, and rebuilt it with my own hands in the middle of the pandemic — knowing nothing about construction, and unable to picture the result. Today it's my home.
And at forty-four, reading a book at six-thirty in the morning, I discovered the word that explained my entire life: aphantasia. My mind cannot form images. It never could. Everything I've achieved — the diplomas, the trades, the art, the house — I achieved without being able to visualize any of it. From that discovery came my first book, Visualize an Apple, and along the way a publishing imprint, Farré Books — because I have a few more books waiting their turn.
I live near Seville with my wife, I still get up at six-thirty to read, and I still do everything the only way I know how: my own.