As Unamuno also pointed out, Rizal -- and Retana as well -- wrote because he had thought and felt. Because, as the great Argentine writer Julio Cortázar said was the first prerequisite for a writer, there was something they felt a passionate need to communicate. However, Retana was more cool-headed than Rizal, something which is perfectly understandable because he was not in the same situation of moral and existentital urgency, to which Rizal had been born, and that Retana only came to realize after he had lived in Filipinas and returned to Spain, and been shocked by Rizal's execution.

   Still and all, Retana discovered his métier, his craft, and the entire direction of his future life in the Philippines -- as a social observer and critic, as a political writer, as a practical moralist and as a bibliographer and scientific historian. There was no way that his passion for the Philippines could be swallowed up by historical forgetting. His light had to reach us perforce, when our consciousness had awakened from the sleep of generations.

   At the moment when we found ourselves ready to listen without prejudice, when we could freely access the culture that first was denied us, and later hidden from us, Retana's labor could not but inspire our curiosity.

   And now we come to the enigma. I don't know how I discovered this biography. Why me, a Filipina who wandered to the other side of the world, with hardly any academic baggage, who when she left her country was practically a blank page, tabula rasa, ignorant of her own history and alienated from her roots?

   I did not even look for this material --- it found me, through the third man in a shifting triumvirate or triad that is the leitmotif of this story. They say all truth is triple. The triads in this story are: Filipinas, España and Chile. Retana, Rizal and José Toribio Medina -- an eminence in Chilean historiography, and another great Filipinist who was first Retana's rival and later his collaborator. And the triad of Rizal, Retana and Miguel de Unamuno. The venerable Unamuno -- two years younger than Rizal, who began his studies also in Letters in the Universidad Central de Madrid, when Rizal was finishing his own. Who saw a parallel between himself and Rizal in Rizal's love for Filipinas and his own love for Vasconia, the Basque Country.

   Unamuno, friend of Retana, who at Retana's request succeeded in decoding the secret entries in Rizal's student diaries. Unamuno, one of the greatest essayists and philosophers of the 20th century, universally revered and loved in the Hispanic world. Unamuno, who in his Epilogue wrote that he had not the least doubt that we the Filipinos would one day play "a fruitful role in the future of human civilization."

   It was Chile, conspiring with Unamuno, who delivered the message that lead to this biography's discovery by a Filipina. A Filipina who had been pointed toward a secret path of return to her self and her country, after internalizing the cultural keys that would enable her to transmit, in turn, the message of Retana to the Filipinos of the future.

   This was in effect a conspiracy of spirits -- the spirits of three countries, expressed through their illustrious sons, to call our attention toward a re-vision of our past. It is thus that the rediscovery of this biography and, together with it, of Retana's contribution in all its human dimension, was inevitable.

   Rizal and Retana are still with us. Rizal -- the mystic, the poet, the lover. Retana -- the scientist, who like Rizal was in love with Filipinas, and like Rizal dedicated his life to her -- not on the execution ground, but in his study. Day after day, decade after decade, in solitary academic labor. I believe he did what Rizal would have done, had Rizal not died so young.

   Rizal: the greatest Filipino of our Hispanic-Filipino era, and the father of our national consciousness. Retana: the greatest Spaniard, in terms of his cultural contribution and the image of Rizal that he preserved for the future generations.

   Chile: Filipinas' distant cousin, who conspired with her to bring this biography back home. Spain -- their mother -- who opened her house in Manila proudly and generously to celebrate their illustrious sons in this family gathering, together with their descendants, who will sustain their dreams in order to transform them into reality.

   I would like to close by expressing my love and thanks to my family, especially to my mother, Felisa Medina Raymond, to my brother Emilio Medina and his wife, María Lourdes Zaldarriaga, without whose support the dream of presenting this biography to the Filipinos would not have been possible.

   I feel special appreciationi for Virgilio Reyes, Consul General of the Philippine Embassy in Santiago de Chile, who arrived there last November 1998. He says that mysteriously, the first time he walked into the Embassy library, the first book he noticed was Rizal According to Retana. Shortly afterwards, he organized together with other members of the expatriate Filipino community, the Asociación Filipina de Chile, whose first activity was the presentation of this book on December 30, 1998 the 102nd death anniversary of Rizal.

   I thank with all my heart, don Sergio Silva and don Delfín Colomé, for their deep discernment, their love for history and culture and their nobility of spirit. I thank Dr. Ambeth Ocampo for accompanying us with his erudition and sense of humor. This books, Looking Back and Rizal Without the Overcoat were markers in my own process of discovery of my bond with the Hispanic era. It is undoubtable that Dr. Ocampo has contributed much to bringing that era closer to contemporary Filipinos.