Torres: An Intimate Portrait of the Kid Who Became King

He joined the police and was assigned to the security of María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, the deputy prime minister in the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
    ‘My parents weren’t expecting me. I arrived by chance,’ confessed El Niño some years ago. His brother and sister were already quite grown-up when the new arrival made his entrance. Attention centres on the little Fernando José Torres Sanz who, despite the normal petty jealousies, is welcomed by his two older siblings. In fact, Flori and José say that, with the arrival of Fernando, the older two become more settled.
    The most amusing anecdote from those early years is the fright his mother gets when he throws around 80,000 pesetas (about £400 at today’s values) out of the window. He was playing with a model toy in his parents’ bedroom. A lorry with a big trailer. He’d filled it with banknotes he’d found in a drawer and then … threw it out of the window. He liked to drop things to see where they ended up. Flori, working round-the-clock to look after the three children, had begun searching for the cash but couldn’t find it and had run out of places to look for it. She was desperate. She only realised what had happened when the neighbours knocked on the door to ask: ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen what’s fallen out of your window?’ She couldn’t imagine that her little ‘Fer’, as his friends call him, had done such a thing. El Niño was a bit naughty both in and outside the house. So much so that José and Flori decide, in a family meeting, to impose tough measures to prevent any more such ‘brilliant’ ideas on Fernando’s part.
    Even if he is the little one of the house, he can’t get away with everything. He has to be subject to the same rules as the other two. Having said that, his brother and sister still allow Fernando to get up to all sorts of mischief. Israel, his older brother, is the model, the example to follow, while Mari Paz is the older sister who indulges him in everything and who makes a fuss of him whenever she can. The friends of the family say that Fernando has his father’s character, the character of the shy, almost introvert, gallegos (people from Galicia) but who are at the same time, good, responsible people and good workers. Pepe doesn’t share this view and today describes his son as ‘an intelligent person, with a head for taking in information and different situations, capable of withstanding difficult moments and enjoying the good ones. Apart from his physical and technical qualities, he’s very strong mentally, has an absolute belief in what he can achieve, has always wanted to get on and improve and this has allowed him to get where he is.’
    The youngster also shows these qualities at school. He gets on well, has good marks, behaves well, is very determined and has a great capacity for concentration. ‘I remember a play we put on at the school. His part was to recite a poem about solidarity,’ remembers Alicia, the language teacher at the Colegio Público Francisco de Quevedo school. ‘He learned it by heart and recited it perfectly.’ All in all, a clever student, but not one who’s averse to a bit of cheating. Once, the teacher catches him red-handed while he’s copying but doesn’t punish him and doesn’t pull him out of the exam. The other students are angry and protest. ‘If you don’t take him out, then we’ll all start cheating,’ they say. But it’s difficult to punish that angel face, which looks as if it would never hurt a fly. His classmates remember …
    The end of term and the beginning of summer. The Torres Sanz family spend the holidays in the father’s home village. There are long weeks with his grandparents, uncles and aunts, his brother and sister, his friends in the village, months of adventure amongst the fields and vegetable gardens. Until his parents discover the seaside town of Cee in Galicia. It was by chance that they passed by there, they liked the place, found a small apartment on the beach and bought it. Fernando is then eight years old and for the following summers this will be his holiday destination. He makes new friends and acquaintances – and one of those will have a fundamental impact on his life. Because on this very beach, the thin, blond, shy lad falls in with a group of youngsters his own age, and meets Olalla Domínguez Liste, who is from the San Lázaro district of Santiago de Compostela and keen on figure