For some years now I have often thought of some words that the poet Miguel Hernández wrote as a preamble to his Elegy dedicated to Ramón Sijé: his friend "with whom he loved so much". Those verses were often recalled by my professors at the University of Navarra; no doubt they recognized something that I did not understand well then. Perhaps I lacked that experience, I did not know what it was to have loved with others. After decades I can now pronounce the verse with propriety. The philosopher Alejandro Llano, professor, teacher and friend with whom we loved so much, has passed away, and we already feel that we are missing his person, his presence and all that we learned to love thanks to him and with him.

There are many of us who passed through his classrooms, who learned from his books, from his style professor, from his good humor, from the improvised classes at cafeteria or in the corridors. But, in addition, he generously shared his subjects of study, his interests, his passions and hobbies, his readings; beyond the programs of study of Philosophy, he showed us the world as a task. With Alejandro Llano we learned to love literature, music, science, art, politics... He encouraged us to go out and open ourselves to other universities and intellectual forums, to deal closely with philosophers and writers he appreciated. So many things!

But until relatively recently, remembering people and experiences and, above all, recalling the University, the classes at Philosophy, the books shared, brought him back for a few minutes to his most genuine self: the teacher always devoted to help, to serve so that others could advance in knowledge.

The ancients said that a sleeping man is a sacred man. In the last years of his life, Alejandro Llano had entered the space of dreams, where things seem to unravel and words hardly help to understand what is happening. Even then, the professor, the intellectual search engine of the truth would wake up for a few moments and surprise with those sparks that gave with the core topic of the conversation.

A sleeping man is sacred and is also a mystery. Because what does not disappear during that sleep is the plot with which he has woven his life, which appeared in his untiring kindness and mission statement of university student. That is why he was so interested in the person who visited him: if it seemed to him that a word said half-jokingly could bother him, he immediately tried to fix it. Likewise, in these reveries, his condition as a thinker surfaced, determined to formulate arguments, who seeks to find the answers, even when he does not recognize the questions.

I have also been able to accompany him in this stage of his life. "Don't leave me!" were his last words when he said goodbye to me a few days ago. I am certain that now it is he who accompanies us and does not leave us.