Alexandre de Fisterra, pseudonym of Alexandre Campos Ramirez, was born here in 1919. The son of the lighthouse’s radio operator, he was a poet, editor, and the inventor of foosball.
At the age of 5 he moved to A Coruña, and at 15 he went to Madrid to study, where he was wounded at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. During his stay in hospital he noticed that the other youngsters missed playing football, so he figured out the way they could play while in hospital. And this is how foosball was born.
He patented it in Barcelona, but lost the document while going into exile in France. He later went to Ecuador and Guatemala, where he started a foosball manufacturing business. Later on, he went into exile in Mexico, where he met the poet León Felipe and developed an interest in writing and publishing. He was always committed to the work of the exiles, and, already back in Spain, in 1976, during the transition to democracy, he continued work on spreading the writings of exiled writers.
He was surprised that his invention became so popular in Spain. The manufacturers who produced it, however, had not given him any credit for it. Nevertheless, Alexandre de Fisterra always wanted to be remembered as the person who promoted the works of León Felipe. He managed his inheritance from Zamora, where he died in 2007. His ashes were partially scattered in the Atlantic waters, off his native Finisterre.
