After a few grey days in Segovia we were treated to a sunny morning. Spring arrived in all its glory and I decided to go for a walk around the city center. That day there was some kind of meetup of latter-day “minute men”, which was the name given to professional photographers who at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th, used to go round towns and cities to provide, as if by magic, a portrait complete with background effects in a question of minutes and at a good price. The photographers were all standing around with their old-style cameras and props, talking wistfully about the good old days, not so long ago, when traditional cameras were king. You could see the emotion in their faces when they talked about when they used to develop those 35mm rolls of film in their own homes using make-shift equipment. Their nostalgia was catching. When I got home the first thing I did was to take out an old biscuit tin where I keep a collection of black and white photos that are slowly turning yellow. Among them there was a photo of my mother at school, in a small Spanish town in the fifties. Her innocent smile was in direct contrast to a Spain that was sad, grey and depressed at the time. It’s amazing to think how far Spain has come since then. “Science today is moving forward at an amazing speed,” said old Don Hilarión, a character in a famous Spanish operetta. The way I see it is that it is only just getting started…