Even if you know that life is ending, and even if you dedicate yourself to writing and earn money from it, when a moment like this comes you don’t really know what to do or what to say. For many, Fernando González de Nicolás was a rider who had his ups and downs with the law, who did everything to race, who ended up in the bag and who raced in all the categories of the Motorcycle World Championship.
Luckily, for me it was much more than a third-person story. Although his friends call him Ranita or Rana, which is how he was introduced to me, and also because my father had told me about him when he told me about his exploits, I have always called him Nani. Only now that he is gone and I have mentioned it at home have I talked about Ranita, so that there would be no doubts.
I imagine being friends with Nani was easy and that’s why he had so many. Although I had seen him in the Jarama paddock in Open Ducados, we did not officially meet until 2009. He, the only driver my father had spoken to me about with that admiration, the figure, the grandfather of racing… He was the driver of the PL Racing truck, better known as the Kawasaki Palmeto.
The fact is that it was difficult not to get along with Nani, who welcomed us with open arms and a smile. Because yes, I think that if there was something characteristic about him, it was his smile. That and you never finished it. From there a relationship was born that gave me great moments, unforgettable and some tremendously fun.
I have many, but from that first time on the circuits I remember that day looking for the pomace by the truck, exhausted with laughter (and us even more so), I was looking for the bottle that “El Boqui” had hidden from him. And the Nani drank pomace even though he didn’t have a spleen, but the Nani was from another planet (and he ended up finding it).
I’m not going to tell everything that we already know about him, because the press already said that at the time and he paid his penalty for that, nor how after the accident they didn’t let him race motorcycles, he switched to cars and won… But it didn’t satisfy him. Nor am I going to talk about the art he had to get money from Alberto Puig Sr, Ángel Nieto and Julio Iglesias to run. But I am going to remember the passion he had when talking about motorcycles. Because Nani has been a pilot, he never retired and you saw that in his eyes, like when he was plotting with Trompa what was the last attempt with the sides.
But we are not going to talk about the sides, there are many stories about them and their attempts. That is the sad part of this incredible film that has been Nani’s life and in which, as my dear Pedro Parajuá told me a while ago, “He has danced what in three lives of a normal person and applying himself”.
I prefer to stay with that anecdote when he met me at the Trompa workshop, or that day when he parked his old Mercedes in the middle of the street in Vallecas in front of a bar and I, fearful, told him “Nani, they are going to fine you“and he answered me”I am the sheriff of Vallecas“It wasn’t the sheriff, obviously, but they didn’t fine him…
Where he did get fined was that time at the Motorcycle Show when we set up a stand. The fact is that we made room for it in the stand. We were riding at the IFEMA on Thursday night when he and Lozano appeared, and behind them the municipal officials inside the pavilion… Apparently they were going too fast with the truck, which was not cutting, it did not have – let’s say – all the papers 100% up to date and who knows what else. In the end everything remained as an administrative procedure and another anecdote.
And so, anecdote by anecdote, detail by detail is how we define what this great little man has been who lived by and for the motorcycle and who, for me, has been the greatest Vallecano rider in history. Vallecano from pro and until the end. And although life gave him the ugliest chotis to dance, Nani did not wrinkle, he looked him in the face like his father looked at the bulls, he danced them and laughed in his face.
We will miss you.
