León 11 is a collective of architects. No. León 11 is a creative production centre. No. León 11 is a cooperative. No. León 11 is a group of friends who work at number eleven León Street in Madrid.
In the competition I did with Aurora, I ended up acting as a bridge between León 11 and her. The project was intended to be the new headquarters of Ars Natura, a natural science museum in Cuenca. Aurora projected and León 11 multiplied. I only translated. Those boys would send me fascinating drawings and images that I would lay out and show to my teacher without contributing practically anything.
I had already heard about Lion 11 at school, but I didn’t know their faces. I didn’t know they had faces. They belonged to a generation to which I was late. From the outside, it seemed like an exclusive club that was difficult to get into. Along with other collectives like Zuloark, Zira02, Pez or Pacman; they formed an unreachable nebula.
The contest went well and I did my best not to be out of place. So much so that I spent half a week at Aurora’s house working almost every hour of the day. One day I fell asleep and woke up on her sofa covered by a blanket and without socks. He was cuddling his dog and from the kitchen came a confused smell of croquettes that Aurora’s mother was making.
In the evenings, Manolo, by now an idol to me, would approach me on Messenger and send me some drawings made with the application itself. Not only was he an impressive architect, but he made you feel protected and sheltered. His talent was such that by just picking up a little of the stuff that fell out of his pockets you could live for a while.
At that time I was trying my luck as a writer. I had just won a minor competition and my first book (and only one to date) was to be published. As my favourite writer was John Fante, I called the book “Un Polvo Raro” (A Strange Dust). It was a collection of short stories that were the result of my excesses on the streets of Madrid.
Manolo was very amused by it all and we quickly became friends. He would take me to Las Naranjas, which was a place that wasn’t called that. Then we would eat wings at the Apolo. A waiter who looked like Puma treated him with reverential courtesy while he dispensed fritanga in bulk. We would end our nights at the Fronton, which was a dark and smoky joint next to the Ideal cinemas. Manolio told me that one night he met Bunbury there.
Months went by. Getting into León 11, whatever it was, seemed quite complicated. Not because they worked like a Masonic lodge or anything like that, but because the space was very small and you had to wait for someone to leave before they offered you a table. And if there was a vacancy, there was bound to be someone faster than you lurking around. In my case it was Johnny Jones.
Juanito Jones was a boy who had asked Manolo to help him prepare for the entrance exam to the School of Architecture in Madrid. He came from the University of Alcalá and he had a lot of things that I will never have. He was a fascinating and still humble boy. He exuded an overflowing adolescent energy and his slimness was enviable.
When I heard that Juanito had entered León I was very angry. But at the time I wasn’t even aware of how much I wanted to join. It was much later, when Gad left, that Manolo called me. I left my flat in Calle Fuencarral and went to live in Usera at a singer-songwriter friend’s house to be able to pay for my table.
My parents couldn’t understand that, with the money the flat cost, I couldn’t work there. I hadn’t finished my degree and my family’s patience was running out. But it was the first time I felt part of something and I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by.
My position was between Javi’s (you will remember him from the meeting with Aurora) and Nacho’s, who was Manolo’s younger brother. Nacho and Manolo had an infographics studio that made images for the cream of Madrid’s architecture scene.
It was called Estudio Malla and Federico Soriano, Gabriel Allende, Aranguren y Gallegos and Andrés Perea, among many others, all worked there. When some of these star architects came to the studio I was dumbfounded and acted with impostured naturalness.
But León 11 was much more than a computer graphics studio. It would be hard to define what it was, but if I had to, I think that León 11 was an effervescent meeting of architects with a lot of talent and an enormous capacity to question everything.
At the forefront of all these questions was María. What is León 11? I kept repeating. María Mallo was a volcano in constant eruption. She still is. She was capable of crying and laughing at the same time. Of questioning her existence and ordering another beer in the Piola, which was the bar downstairs.
Maria clashed a lot with Manolo and I, as a self-proclaimed henchman, was very intimidated by her presence. I was amazed at how well she modelled in 3D and even more amazed at how little she cared. I would have stayed and lived in any of the cliff drawings at the end of his degree.
Competitions were constantly being held, while at the same time helping other architects to do them. The brightness that dominated the atmosphere contrasted with the precariousness of many jobs. Javi worked for Atxu Amán (whom I admired for a short time) and Andrés Cánovas, for example.
But there was a competition that changed everything forever. Manolo had been making models and drawings with organic shapes for some time, reminiscent of his final degree project. Little by little they became more complex and all that graphic and compositional excellence materialised in the competition for the Ciudad Del Pop in Taiwan.
The whole studio was involved. There were many, many nights working on that huge project. My parents had given me an ultimatum and I had to focus on my final project, so I couldn’t help. I don’t think I would have been able to either. Although I shared space and friendship with all of them, I still felt a huge distance and was content to learn and enjoy that magnetic ambient energy.
A novel could be written about that competition (hopefully one day). There was everything: romances, betrayals, robberies, aeroplanes… It was the most incredible master a person like me could have ever attended. It was hypnotic to see that parade of personalities arranging their expectations (and in some cases miseries) around Manolo’s imposing proposal.
After the delivery, months passed and routine had returned to the studio. When competitions were held in such remote places, there was a feeling of having thrown a bottle into the sea. I was still trapped by my strained relationship with my final year tutor and the days repeated themselves with their ritual of lines and layers.
But suddenly a message arrived that shook the neighbourhood of Las Letras. I looked through the window of the Piola. María was jumping and hugging Nacho. Luis, Ali, Laura, we all went out into the street, oblivious to the change those four words were going to produce. It was Manolo: “Tronkitos, we have won Taiwan”.
