Alejandro Finisterre
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Alejandro Campos Ramírez (May 6, 1919 – February 9, 2007) (known as Alexandre de Fisterra and Alejandro Finisterre) was a poet, inventor (of table football among other things) and editor.
He was born in Fisterra (Galicia) in 1919. When his father's shoemaking business failed, the director of his school made Finisterre pay his tuition by correcting the homework of lower grades. Later he became a construction worker and worked in a print shop.
Finisterre was injured during fascist bombings of Madrid in the Spanish civil war. In hospital he saw many children injured and unable to play football. This was his inspiration for foosball, which was born from the concept of table tennis. Alejandro credits his friend Francisco Javier Altuna, a Basque carpenter, for making the first foosball game following Finisterre's directions. Although the invention was patented in 1937, Finisterre had to escape to France from the fascist coup d'etat, and he lost the patent papers in a storm.
After he invented foosball he fled Francisco Franco's Spain to Latin America. His leftish ideology, however, would lead him to problems in Guatemala, where he was kidnapped when Carlos Castillo Armas took over the country, and he was sent by airplane to Madrid. During that flight Alejandro threatened the pilot by telling him that he had explosives (one of the first aircraft hijackings).
Later in Mexico, he became an editor. He died in Zamora on the February 9, 2007.
