It was the time you spent with your rose that made it so important
'The Little Prince', Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Holy Week is behind us, damn, it rained and it's starting to get hot.
Summer is shaping up.
When summer arrives, Laura Ester (34) goes to Peñaparda, 110 kilometers from Salamanca, where Felisa, her mother, was born, and where a range of uncles and cousins live.
And if it's hot, if it's hot, then grab the swimsuit, the towel and the flip flops, and grab it and say:
–I'm going to my pool, to spend the afternoon.
And it is literal: Laura Ester is not fooling anyone.
Well, the Peñaparda municipal pool is called Laura Ester Ramos.
And that's what his nameplate says.
–And when you go to splash in your pool, don't the neighbors come and bother you? Don't they ask for photos?
–Nooooo, maneeee, there are 300 inhabitants in the town and at this point everyone has taken photos with me.
–And doesn't it seem strange to you, bathing in the pool that bears your name?
–I've been doing it all my life. Well, not all. When she was very little she would go to bathe me in the river (the Perosín River). There was no swimming pool in the town then. Then, when I was five or six years old, they opened the municipal swimming pool. And a while ago they named it after me.
(...)
Not all of us have a pool to our name.
Not a ward, not a room in a hospital, not a street.
You have to earn it.
Laura Ester is the goalkeeper for CN Sabadell and the Spanish water polo team. She has competed in three Games and has won two silver medals and, if all goes well, this summer she will compete in the quarterfinals and seek the third podium.
If possible, gold.
(Aside from that are her infinite world and European titles, and her successes with CN Sabadell, triumphs that have opened new professional avenues for her: she is an ambassador for Le Coq Sportif).
–Do you see it possible? Do you see yourself winning gold in Paris?
–Well, first they have to select me...
-Are they not going to select her?
–No one is essential in this life. There were 18 players in the initial group, but the official list of thirteen will not be released until a week before the opening of the Games.
–But you make an effort, don't you?
–I train morning and afternoon. My sporting life is incompatible with my working life. I have finished Biochemistry and I am studying an online master's degree, a master's degree in Dermopharmacy. But really, I spend my days in the water and in the gym. On a day-to-day basis it is four hours a day. And with the national team, eight.
–And do you already like it?
–Studying is good for me. Otherwise, water polo would be too much. In fact, in the future I see myself working in dermopharmacy. Where I don't see myself is as a coach.
-And so?
–I don't know if I would have patience... Let's see, there are goalkeepers who are goalkeeper coaches. I don't know, it's not in my thoughts.
If I rewind to his beginnings as a water polo player, I notice that then, when he was a child, few children played it in our country.
Rara avis is: water polo player and goalkeeper.
–My parents made me swim so I wouldn't be afraid of water.
(And he has ended up having a swimming pool in his name.)
And it continues:
–I swam, but at the club, the Mediterrani, they wanted to set up a water polo academy for girls. Back then, only two or three kids in the entire club played it.
-AND...?
–I was twelve years old when they asked me: 'why don't you try?' And I left delighted with that small group of girls who had a great time playing team sports.
–And did you play with children?
–In fry the difference was not so noticeable. It was noticeable in children (13 and 14 years old), when they were gaining more strength. So they did separate us.
–And why did she become a goalkeeper?
–When they saw me swimming, they said: 'better, stand in the goal'.
–¿...?
–Matilde de Miguel, my coach when I was little, had seen something in me, I don't know what. The fact is that she was not wrong and I thank her for that. He is doing very well in goal.
–¿...?
–I understand that, as a child, you want to score goals and not accept the thirty of some children who beat you up. But in the end you grow fond of him.
–Is the goalkeeper the different one?
–We are special: they throw balls at us and we don't like to throw them. We have a point of madness, it seems like we want our faces to be blown up.
