Paco El Montañero: The 78-year-old who is still climbing Granada's mountains

His DNI national identity card states that his name is Francisco Fernández Pérez (Granada, 1945), but in Granada everyone knows him as 'Paco El Montañero' (Paco the mountaineer) and it's obvious why. Now 78, Paco has been climbing mountains for 63 years. "That's where I found myself", he says, looking at Granada from the Cerro del Sol.

He climbed his first mountain when he was fifteen. "We kids from Calle del Aire, next to Plaza Nueva, used to have fun looking for nests in the Avellano or bathing in the Darro, but one day in August we decided to go on an excursion following the tram line to Hotel del Duque, in Güéjar Sierra, over the Barranco San Juan, and it got so late that we didn't get home until late at night," he recalls, adding, "My mother punished me by not letting me leave the house and hiding my rucksack.

"I was struck by the grandeur, the enormity, the sensation of being very small compared to the immensity of everything that surrounded me," Paco says of that first climb and once the punishment was over, the first thing he did was to join the Sierra Nevada Society, "but as the fee was very high and I was a stiff child I signed up for the P-4 Alpine Club in Calle San Antón," he laughs.

It was there that Paco met his great teacher Pepe Borlán, who taught him two things: first and foremost, to love nature, and secondly, to get into all those low and high mountain routes around Granada.

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"Loving the Sierra means not disturbing the animals, because that is their home and not ours; not stepping on the flora because in the Sierra Nevada there are many species that are unique in the world; and not littering because an orange peel takes five years to degrade and a soft drink can takes more than five hundred," Paco explains. For all these reasons, it's clear that the people who go up to the Sierra Nevada on Sundays are not exactly his friends. "I can't stand it, they leave everything full of rubbish," he says.

Paco el Montañero was born in the "maternity ward of the poor" in Granada's Hospital Real on 11 May 1945. Paco had a twin brother who sadly died when he was just two years old "due to a bad diarrhoea".

"Life was not easy for us because we had no money and because of my father's Republican background," he recalls. So at the age of ten, he was already earning his living selling 'La Goleada', a leaflet with the results of the football matches that was printed in Calle Fábrica Vieja and later as a sweet seller at the Regio cinema.

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However, everything changed when one morning, walking down the Nebot alley, he saw a poster looking for an apprentice for the Radiadores Ortiz factory. "Tomorrow you'll come with work clothes", Don José Ortiz Sotomayor told him. He stayed with the company until he was 57 years old.

During that time he met his wife Pepita with whom he had children. Later, when the Americans bought the factory and made some of the staff redundant he worked as a caretaker in the Metropolitan Transport Consortium until he retired at the age of 65.

Paco knows the mountains of the province like the back of his hand, although his favourite spot is the Lanjarón River valley, where one side faces the Mediterranean and the other the Atlantic. "The sunsets from the small Puesto del Cura lagoon, where you can see the Vega de Granada on one side and the Almijara on the other, are marvellous," he says.

Although he has also experienced some very complicated moments. Ten years ago, for example, when he fell into the Pozo de la Nieve. "I broke my shoulder and almost froze to death, but fortunately the rescue helicopter arrived in time and they were able to transfer me to hospital," he says.

After two years of rehabilitation, he returned to the trails with his walking sticks and his trademark head scarves. "I have them in all shapes and sizes," he smiles.

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After his wife Pepita died eight years ago Paco decided to mark all his birthdays by climbing La Veleta. "I'll keep doing it as long as my body can take it," he says.