Historias · Stories
Stories
Short stories to go with the photos in the slideshow. Each one keeps to what Dad wrote himself, in emails and on his photos, or to his own published timeline. Where we are not sure who is in a picture, we say so. If you know more, please tell us.
Manaus, Brazil, 1976
Years later he posted this photo with a few lines of his own, which we quote as he wrote them:
“Manaus, Brazil, 1976. I was 30 y.o. and Engineer. Installing SSR at Brazil’s new international A/P (SSR stands for Secondary Surveillance Radar). At the time, I was working for A.I.L (Airborne Instruments Labs.) a NASA subc. (Deer Park, NY)”
That year he also became a U.S. citizen.
Photos sent home to Spain
Two photos from Spain in 1974 carry their own labels: “Ryan, mamá e Iván” and “Ryan, papá e Iván.” His first son, Ryan Carlo, was born that year in Puerto Rico, three months before Dad graduated as an engineer.
In February 2000 he was back in Spain. Years later he sent the photos to his sister Rosa under the title “Fotos de febr. del 2000 con mamá” (photos from February 2000, with Mom). They show the family gathered at home with his mother, Amadora.
“Un vigués, al Congreso de los EE UU”
When he ran for the U.S. House in 2002, his hometown paper took notice. On January 31, 2002, Faro de Vigo ran the headline “Un vigués, al Congreso de los EE UU”: a man from Vigo, running for the U.S. Congress. He kept a scan of the page for almost twenty years.
In 2016 he ran again, in the Democratic primary for Florida’s 18th District. He qualified for the ballot by petition.
Summing up, 2012–2013
At 64 he described himself as a “profesor de física, ingeniero de telecomunicaciones, y empresario de software”: a physics professor, a telecommunications engineer, and a software entrepreneur. He published his book under Xoán Xuna, his name in Galician, in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and German.
In 2013, back in Florida after two years as a physics professor in Paraguay, he summed up his career as thirty years as an engineer and seven years teaching in Florida.
Back to Galicia, 2017
In 2017, now retired, he went back to Galicia to study theoretical physics. That May he flew in, rented a car in Vigo, and drove to Salamanca. He wrote to his children about the trip.
In 2018 he finished a master’s degree in particle physics at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. The bound copy of his final project, which he holds in the photo below, is titled MataTor, about disabling tornadoes with a laser system. Next came doctoral research on cosmic rays at the same university, with Professor Garzón.
A favorite table in Santiago
On May 29, 2018, he took a selfie in Santiago and wrote across the top: “Fuimos a comer a mi restaurante favorito ‘A CEPA’ de Matías.” (We went to eat at my favorite restaurant, A Cepa.) The next year, on November 10, 2019, his 71st birthday, he took another selfie by the harbor.
Summer 2023: with Alana
In June 2023 he and his daughter were together in Vigo. He sent himself the photo from Vigo’s Peinador airport twice, once as “Foto con hija en Peinador” (photo with my daughter at Peinador) and once as “AX y yo!” Alana sent him one more from those days, titled simply “Foto juntos”: a photo of the two of them together.
Sources: Dad’s own emails and photo captions (1974–2023), his published timeline (“Who is JX”) and the official 2016 results. The family has a review copy listing the source for every sentence. Some people in these photos are not named here because we are not sure who they are. If you can help, please get in touch.