lavandeira.net

Last night I learnt that Ángel Cortés has just passed away. He was 58 years old, and one of the pioneers of Internet in Spain.

We first met in the early 90s, years before Internet access became popular or even easily available in Spain. At the time he was running NeXuS MSX BBS from his home, the only BBS in the country dedicated to MSX computers. I used to dial into his BBS from my MSX2 computer using a 300 bps modem. With his help I later started my own BBS and FidoNet node (LuzNET 2 BBS, 2:343/163).

During the late 90s we worked together at Intercom, back then one of Spain’s biggest Internet service providers. There he started Noticias Intercom, which later became noticias.com. It was one of the biggest news site in Spanish. He also started noticies.com, one of the first news sites in Catalan.

In 2002 he left Grupo Intercom. He asked me for help to start his own news portal: NoticiasDot. We actually ran the whole thing from a server in my Tokyo apartment for about two years, until we moved everything to a hosting company. I was helping him with all the technical stuff until around 2008.

In short, he’s the person who introduced me to computer networks and communications. If I hadn’t met him I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.

Thanks for everything, Angel.