There is a moment in the history of climbing that we are used to describing as a rupture: the shift from alpinism to sport climbing, a technical and generational transformation that supposedly changed everything.

Yet in Manolo’s words, this fracture loses its solidity. It was never truly a change of worlds, but rather a change of perspective.

It is something that arises from an elemental, almost naïve perception, and which he himself describes with great simplicity: “When I reached the top of a mountain, the simplest thing was seeing things in a different way. I had never taken a plane, I had never seen the plains from above, and from a mountain you see things differently—this was already the first way of seeing things differently, of shifting my viewpoint. And that was the first sensation.”

It is within this shift that everything opens up. Not in conquest, but in the possibility of looking at what already exists from a new perspective.

Manolo comes to the mountains without a true alpine education, without the weight of tradition or of the mythology that already permeated that world at the time. He says so himself, with a lightness that is also a declaration of independence: to him, Walter Bonatti “might as well have been a cyclist.”

There was no reverence, no imitation. There was only a direct encounter with the rock, lived as an immediate, almost physical experience, one that still retains the same intensity today: “For me, the rock still represents a very powerful emotion; it’s something that still happens to me—when I touch the stone, I feel something deeply moving. My first memory of the rock, of this wall that at first seemed flat and smooth, was how it filled with holds. And that’s where I was fascinated, because it seemed alive, and because I could find a route—one that was mine, not one someone else had already taken. I could discover my own path, just as I can when I ski down fresh snow, through soft snow where there are no tracks. I could find a line, I could build it myself; all it took was creativity and imagination.”

In these words there is already an idea of climbing that breaks away from any fixed scheme: not repetition, but creation; not execution, but invention. And it is precisely this vision that makes his gradual departure from a certain way of understanding alpinism almost inevitable. It is not an ideological rejection, but an inner tension that grows with experience, until it becomes an ethical choice. “I tried to give importance to the quality with which I wanted to reach the top of a mountain or a wall. Quality mattered more than quantity, and the way I wanted to climb. That way rejected pitons - I didn’t want to hang on them, I wanted to do it with my hands and my feet. And it was very dangerous. Bolts didn’t exist, expansion anchors didn’t exist. I abhorred that way of climbing.”

What from the outside may appear as an extreme, almost reckless gesture is in fact born from a search for coherence. It is not risk that is being sought, but the quality of the gesture—the manner. The way of getting there becomes more important than getting there itself. And within this search, the confrontation with the void inevitably emerges, at first in its most brutal form: an oppressive presence, almost unbearable. “When I realized there was emptiness beneath me, I was afraid—and I wasn’t aware that I was afraid of the void. It wasn’t easy there… I felt a silence stronger than my heartbeat; it’s something terrifying.”

Yet it is precisely by passing through that fear that something changes. Over time, the void that once seemed to deny all possibility becomes an integral part of the experience, until it turns into a reference point, almost a support: “Climbing alone without a rope on a mountain, I had finally reached my goal. The void had become something concrete, a point of support—I almost needed it.”

« I consider myself very fortunate because I had the opportunity to choose »

It is a transformation that is difficult to explain unless one has gone through it, and perhaps this is why it is so often misunderstood—reduced to a spectacular gesture, a challenge to limits for its own sake. In reality, in his words another element emerges clearly, far less visible yet decisive: responsibility. Not responsibility toward an audience or toward an exemplary ideal, but the more radical responsibility toward oneself. “I consider myself very fortunate because I had the opportunity to choose. Freedom is a very difficult word to explain… I have always tried to place responsibility ahead of protagonism—responsibility toward myself and toward others.”

This idea of freedom is far removed from any rhetoric. It is not about doing everything, but about choosing how to do it, and accepting the consequences. And it is precisely this dimension that clashes with a contemporaneity in which the mountain tends to become ever more accessible, ever more controlled, almost domesticated. Sport climbing today is a codified system, made up of grades, protections, and information available at all times—a world in which it seems that everything has already been written.

And it is here that his thinking becomes even sharper, almost uncomfortable, because it touches the central knot of our relationship with these places: “I’ve always said that the mountains are open to everyone, fortunately—but they are not for everyone, because they imply a difficulty that contains an element of danger, which I also find right and fair. I would like it to remain that way, because it opens you up to a different experience. An experience that helps you grow, because if you accept this, you accept danger without domesticating it, you develop an inner security that then allows you to see things in a different way.”

«Sometimes it would be better not to know - to go and remain astonished.»

It is not an elitist position, nor a nostalgic one. It is a reflection on the very nature of the mountain. Its beauty cannot be separated from its complexity, from exposure, from unpredictability. To fully domesticate it would mean emptying it of an essential part of the experience.

And it is here that his thinking returns, once again, to what is essential. Discovery is not necessarily found in the new, but in the way we look at what already exists. “Sometimes it would be better not to know—to go and remain astonished.”

It is a simple but radical invitation: to return to a direct relationship with the place, to accept uncertainty, to recover the value of doubt. Not out of nostalgia for an unrepeatable past, but to restore to experience that dimension of authenticity which does not depend on tools or difficulty, but on the quality of one’s gaze.

Today that gaze has changed even for him. There is no disavowal, but awareness. “I now feel smaller than when I began. I feel fear in those places, and immense respect.”

Perhaps this is precisely the point of arrival—if such a point exists—of such a long journey: not the conquest of something, but a different position in relation to what has always been sought. A subtler, more fragile, and at the same time deeper way of inhabiting the mountain.

And so that passage we are accustomed to calling a revolution reveals itself for what it has always been: not a change of direction, but a change of perspective. The walls are the same, the places are the same. It is the gaze that continues to transform. And within that transformation, today as then, there remains space for something that is never truly finished: the possibility of discovery.