Prologue
Josep Quilis i Álvarez
Fountains can hide many secrets; a few laps they quiet and listen in a respectful tone of confidentiality; others, as in the case of the Font Round, become the real protagonists of the local life of a village in which any novelty was to be commented on, often warmly around that source.
Following the verses of John, so full of tenderness and tenderness, we find ourselves immersed in the 1960’s, essentially, in a time that hid little uncertainty for all children. The fountain of La Prunera and its surroundings were waiting for us from five in the afternoon, when leaving the school, to restart our particular batalletes in a scene so unattainable and grandiose that it seemed to us at that time of film and which over time has become ruined to a small and humble forgotten space. On the other hand, the fountains are gradually disappearing, some victims of modern agriculture who, by irrigating the surface, stigmatize the aquifers in the least expression.
Also, the troughs have disappeared in the village because the cavalry have improved their lives. However, I do not understand those peoples who remove their sources from public roads and public life, as the essence of the people becomes more widespread when you can cool down under them. However, in Otos we can still enjoy many of the sources that give life to the poem; we have, for example, the Round Fountain if we press the tap, but not the usual forum that, as the friend tells us, around it flickered and “ acquired the dimension of town by sitting on the stone ”; and above all, in generous rainy years, the Font de Baix is full of life; which, as John evokes evocative, continues to be “impetuous and with pure eyes” … And for many years.