Julio Villar

Born in San Sebastián in 1943, Julio Villar soon abandoned his studies for a life of travelling, climbing and discovering nature. Passionate and bent on what he was doing, at a young age he became one of the pioneers of extreme mountain climbing in Spain. By the early 1960s he had already completed many of the most famous ascents of the time in the Pyrenees and the Alps. In 1967, following a mountain accident and a long period of convalescence, Villar acquired a small seven-metre-long sailboat. He would set out on a long and slow journey in this boat just a few months later, to the farthest flung corners of the Earth. This voyage would lead to the book ¡Eh, Petrel!

The emotions from his oceanic journey, which arise as he traverses the Pyrenees, are compiled in his second and last book, Viaje a pie.