Twelve in the morning. The remains of a wedding are dissolved in the Civil Registry of Pradillo street. An older man starts his Mercedes and after a few meters stops in a large lot in front of the headquarters of EL MUNDO. Deluded of me I turn to this God in life and I tell him when I understand what he is going to do. “Federico, enter the newspaper in the bathrooms on the first floor.”

-I thank you, but I have always pissed in the street, in the field.

After a brief greeting, I say goodbye to the anarchist, chaotic cyclist, to the person with a good and bad temper, to be above and to be below. Capable of having a cognac with Agua del Carmen in the middle of the Tour and of winning and losing races with his lack of method.

Historians say that he began riding his bike in Toledo to evade surveillance and be able to buy and sell food on the black market after the war.. The Civil Guard never caught him, but he did have a serious problem on one occasion. After a tip off, civilians were chasing him and he had to take refuge under a bridge where he stayed for a long time. The humidity and the bugs caused him a typhus that almost took him ahead.

In those years, he stole vegetables by jumping with some colleagues into a truck that stopped when it reached a bridge, a moment that was used by the kids to jump into the back of the vehicle and throw all the vegetables and fruit that were collected by the cronies.. He collected remains of bombs (pure anarchy) and metals from the Civil War in Toledo and worked unloading trucks for subsistence wages, what there was after the war.

His chaos led him to win or wait for his rivals while taking the famous ice cream. A marketing genius, a science that had not yet been born. He faced whoever was necessary, even if it was Luis Puig, his director, whom he sent to the club.

I came across it over the years several times. One of them in the presentation of a Vuelta a España. He was over 90 years old and ate like the kid who stole vegetables in Toledo. In Toledo there was no God. It was the Holy Trinity.

The last time I had the opportunity to greet him was in a town in Toledo on the birthday of a candy magnate who gathered dozens of people in a zoo full of dead animals.. surreal afternoon. I was like a rose.

But age is like a port that never ends and crushes you as you climb. A domestic accident and a broken toe, aggravated by osteoporosis, a disease that few men suffer from, made a mess of him in his last years in his rural retreat in Valladolid.

Bahamontes was the victorious anarchy on the highway. His personal life was also complicated and his beloved Fermina, who ran the bike shop in Toledo, forgave him for his escapades. He recognized two twin daughters born out of wedlock.

Fermina was always accompanied in her last years by the anarchist cyclist capable of the best and the worst. The Tour, always the Tour, awarded him in 2013 with the distinction of best climber, a trophy that takes him to the highest point in history.

His triumphs were many, but perhaps the greatest was, in addition to being a great cyclist, being a free man and continuing to pee, discreetly, on a plot of land on Pradillo street, in front of EL MUNDO or going down the Galibier.