Antonio Mercero

Spanish director, author of great success TV series and several award-winning films. His father, a staff chief in a local tyre factory, was shot by the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War when he was only 6 months old. His mother wanted him to study Law, and that's what he did. He starting studying at the University of Valladolid, but that wasn't his real vocation, which was, as he himself says, 'to tell stories'. Every summer he used to go back to Lasarte, his home village, and make festivals, sketches and parodies. Once he finished his Law studies, in 1959, he decided to enter the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía, where he made four short films: 'La oveja negra', 'Pis', 'La muerta' and Trotín Troteras (1962). In 1962, after finishing his cinematographic studies, he directed his first work as a professional, _Lección de arte (1961)_, and it won the Golden Seashell at the Festival of San Sebastián. His first attempt to make a feature film ('Está lloviendo y te quiero', about his child