The Victory of Simplicity.

Estrella G. was close to ninety, and in her way of speaking still pulsed the essence of Castile: austere, direct, practical, loyal, and sincere. She needed no embellishments, for in her sobriety lay all the strength of a life chosen in truth.

She had grown up in Segovia, surrounded by the smell of the bread her grandmother baked, the sound of cowbells at dusk, and the murmur of the elders’ conversations, always tinged with a discreet fear—the legacy of a war that had divided her very neighbors and lingered in hushed voices and cautious gestures.

Her father, an ally and eternal traveler, sowed in his children the curiosity that stretched beyond the horizon of the Segovian fields. He encouraged them to study, to dream, to broaden their vision. It was in high school that she discovered art and, above all, books: the Segovia library became her refuge and her truest school. Later came Madrid and university, where she studied Economics. There she found the strength of friendship, the freedom of shared walks, the inspiration of professors such as José Luis Sampedro, and also a young man from Seville who would become her lifelong husband.

Unaware of her own talent, she might have opened many doors, for she knew—thanks to books—that the world was vast and full of possibilities. But she chose another path: her family.

Motherhood came early, and with it the certainty that she wished for no greater enterprise than to raise and sustain four children in times when life was still measured in sacrifice. She never saw it as a renunciation, but as a natural course shaped by her own family experience, and she lived it with coherence, peace, and without fuss.

In her there is no trace of resentment, nor nostalgia for what might have been. She looks at her children and grandchildren with the humility of one who feels no superiority, nor believes she lived in a better era. She knows that every age has its challenges and its opportunities, and that what is essential does not change: loyalty, sincerity, and the value of sustaining a family.

Today, when asked how she wishes to be remembered, she answers without grandiloquence: “with affection.”

That is, perhaps, the greatest victory of a whole life: to have sown love, to have kept her word, and to have shown—through the Castilian sobriety that always accompanied her—that greatness hides in the simplicity of everday life.

CFC.