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The brief prologue pushes us into the book: "In the beginning was the North Wind. Afterwards, the Roman Legions and the Virgin del Pilar arrived. Since then, Zaragoza has been a city of priests and military officers, a city half monk and half standard bearer, an authentic step mother." In Zaragoza, the chronological order has been eliminated, and the eighty extremely brief biographical sketches, accompanied by their corresponding portraits, provide an order based on the links that place each new character in connection with the immediately prior one. By pure chance or paradoxical design, there are two people who were not born in Zaragoza which appear at both ends. The list opens, which cannot be otherwise, with the Virgin del Pilar, who visited Zaragoza on the 2nd of January in 40 A.D. in order to visit the disciple Santiago (St. Jacob), who was camped next to the Ebro river, and who left a jasper column in her memory. It is closed by the poet and painter, Antonio Fernández Molina, "who came to Zaragoza with his wife, Josefa Echeverría, so that their six daughters could study in the school of their friends, the Labordeta family, and they stayed forever. Which says a great deal in favour of the city."
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This book about Zaragoza, written and illustrated by José Luis Cano, presents a gallery of characters, some are very popular, others are practically unknown, which have left their footprints or at least their socks in this Aragon city.
