Alejandro Finisterre

Life & Legacy

Alexandre Campos Ramírez (6 May 1919 – 9 February 2007), commonly known by his pseudonym Alejandro Finisterre, was a Galician inventor, poet and publisher, known for inventing the Spanish version of table football.
Born in Galicia, he moved to Madrid at an early age, where he developed a passion for poetry and an anarchist philosophy, inspired by the work of León Felipe. During the Spanish Civil War, he was wounded in the siege of Madrid, leaving him disabled. While recovering, he invented table football as a way for him and his fellow disabled patients to keep playing a version of association football.
After the war, he fled to Latin America, where he sold his invention and continued his publishing activities. After the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, he was kidnapped by Francoist agents, but managed to escape by threatening to blow up the plane he was on with a fake bomb. After the Spanish transition to democracy, he returned to his home country, where he continued publishing and became an authority on the works of León Felipe. He spent the last years of his life in conflict with the Zamora city council, as they had accepted his collection of Felipe's works but did not establish a museum for them.