In 1981, I made a documentary called Carboneros de Navarra, about the lives and customs of the last remaining people still making charcoal in various regions of Navarre. One of these coal burners was Anastasio Ochoa, affectionately known as Tasio. He lived in Zúñiga, a small village in the Estella region, but his real home had always been in the mountains. As soon as I met him, I was struck by the way he understood and dealt with life. He used to say that “the mountain gives you everything you need to live” and that working for others was not a natural way of life. His simplicity and his inner balance with his humanity, as well as with nature, deeply appealed to me and I felt his life was worth bringing to the screen. […]
After shooting the documentary, I would go with him to the mountains, where he made charcoal, poached and fished. During these long encounters, he would tell me anecdotes about his life, which I would record on a small cassette. This is how I came to know and admire this person; a man who was always true to his principles, who never accepted social norms and who, in everything he said and did, was a tribute to love and the freedom of nature. […] We shot Tasio in Navarre, in a dozen villages scattered across the valleys of Améscoa and Lana, and in the Sierra de Urbasa mountains. Throughout filming, we benefited from the generosity of the local people, who participated as extras and also lent us period costumes and props that we used in the film. […] First as a person and then as a film, Tasio marked a turning point in my life. Up until then, I had been a professor of electronics at polytechnics. I’d always wanted to make films, but my family’s financial situation didn’t allow it. Meeting Tasio prompted me to fictionalise his story and opened the doors to cinema, something I had always dreamed of.

Montxo Armendáriz