On one occasion my father told me that he had a friend dedicated to the sewing of books and that the lights in the house were scattered around him would sew him and give him to bind them. He was 18 to 19 years old and wrote articles from time to time in the Clear Sky. The light was already dirt, even though in the title Zeruko hura and the prologue of Mikel Atxaga were protectors. The hiding place was also from the Capuchins. Elixabete, Pilar and Lurdes approached us from time to time on all corners of the Basque peoples to Joxemari, Ermiñe, Mikel, Felix, Txema, Koldo, Balere and many more.

Bixente made covers for ARGIA. I liked the covers. They were audacious, tender, humor images. Every painting had some unpredictability. The naturalness of each painting was presented and, at the same time, a calm and careful work was performed. Without words, the painting was an impressive poetic image, in which the sense of joy was seen levitating on the sense of reality.

Magritte in San Sebastian and Villabona. Landscape and people. You see Bixente walking through the streets of the city collecting fragments at night. He walked through paths between the villages, gathering missing tools on the edge of fields and ravines. He looked like one of those men who drove along the coast route and stood to look at the rainbow, who stands in front of or behind the rainbow.

I do not remember a specific date and, furthermore, I do not know whether it is possible to mark it with specific dates, because that time was a little implausible. The period 1975-1980 was difficult for the public and the landscape. Then they would give us a lot of tapping. Everything seemed to change quickly and the long night, in stone, seemed to light up slowly. The day seemed long and whirlwind, and the nights were even stranger. It was all in the sand, as Bernardo wrote in Ethiopia. Little certainty, much illusion and little certainty.

Even the barricades crossed the streets. It came to politics, to literature, to music and to painting. I remember tapas that were not those of Bixente, painted by the relentless reality, such as Amparo's loving nudity. Ikurrina was prohibited, as it was used both green, red and white and in concealing. The workers were still entering the factory with the blue monkey, like in the 19th century. And everybody wanted to do something against Lemoiz's nuclear power plant, at least listen. Most of the young people were willing to pave the way so that we could never go out, in everything, in love, in politics or in any other addiction. Everything was anti-religious, anti-capitalist, anti-patriotic and revolutionary. Most interesting things were dangerous, as they could end up at the Civil Guard headquarters.

And so, a week later, Bixente's skin came as a summary of the time. Week after week, unexpected, amazing, beautiful was the cover of Bixente. Calm scenes, because in that calmness something was about to happen with the air. The paintings were completely separated from easy explanations such as museums. A suspicious iconography, because it caused mistrust towards reality.

I once met him personally, in the Capuchin hideaway of the magazine. It wasn't ambitious. In a low voice, more than speaking, I listened. It was seen that both in the painting and on other occasions he sought. He also had a sense of humor and humbly laughing, as if he first had to do something for himself to make him free and amicably. He was with him and, with that humility, he seemed as if he had left one of those paintings. A figure out of place, seeking freedom, against the need to exist, seeking possibilities of existing.

My father, who had a friend of booksellers, told me that I was going to sew them for ARGIA, which was distributed around the house, to store my items. My papers didn't matter to me, but I said yes, thinking about them there could be an expression of the season. Magazines came for a few days with two or three cooked books. But the ARGIA covers were missing. The tailor, with his colour and glossy paper, looked different to him and had made only black and white paper sheets. I remember, Dad, holding my protest, where the colored shells were, that the skins were indispensable, that the covers were the most important, that they would be lost in the workshop of sewing books or in a landfill. The father went to his friend's house the following day and brought with joy all the loose surfaces.

It was important to recover them. Because in the quiet moment of the covers was summed up time, past time, present time and future time, with what was said and what was silenced, with what happened and with what did not happen. And lo and behold, the gates have come again over time, as if they were doors that could be opened. Spectacular poetic images, real things converted into images and fantasies that endure with the desire to become real. Well I stitched the book, which the Modisto has forgotten the texts on this occasion, to see if the time it sees and feels – the past of the present, the present of the past and the future of the past – is seen and felt in the covers of Bixente.