... my parents were intelligent, cultivated and serious people, and, like many other Republicans, they supported and defended the Second Republic. They also lost a Civil War that resulted in a terrible post-war period and a detestable dictatorship that they fought against and in which they fought to survive, remaining worthily faithful to their principles until their death.

... the material superiority was overwhelming in favour of Franco's forces. The defenders of Teruel, then commanded by Valentin González (Campesino) were surrounded on 20 February. On the 21st, when they had already lost the Plaza de Toros and had no ammunition other than hand bombs, El Campesino, mounted on a tank, broke through the siege and he returned at nightfall to the Division command post, located in Plaza del Torico, after having met with Juan Modesto, commander of the 5th Army Corps. Two thousand men remained there, attacked by the entire Castilian Army Corps and under fire from fifty batteries. The Board of Command decided to try to leave and at ten o'clock at night the Republicans swam across the Turia, where they suffered many casualties. They made their way through with hand bombs, but more than a thousand were taken prisoner, among them Palacio Gros, chief of staff of the 46th Division. A handful of men led by El Campesino were the only ones who could reach the Republican lines.

Being a refugee is having lost, due to the brutal force of circumstances, a past. To lose a past is to die a little ... Eight years of silent and underground struggle in our homeland, eight years of living gagged, deprived of freely exposing our ideas, have created in us a habit of silence.

... I was lucky of having from the 3rd year of the Baccalaureate to the 2nd year of the University, Ángel Palacio Gros as professor of geometry.

To my parents Pepita and Ángel, for teaching me that life was also a true comedy.

Pilar Eva Palacio writes, according to her own confession, that she fell in love with Peter Pan at an early age, which is when the children of good teachers usually learn to read and write. Her mother, Pepita Menéndez Pablos, taught her daughters, Pilar Eva is the eldest, with her great pedagogical wisdom while her father, Ángel Palacio Gros, taught Analytical Geometry and Mathematical Analysis at the Central University of Caracas: a marriage of political exiles, of the very first clandestine fighters against Francoism, who fled as a result of a downfall that involved them and who would not return to Spain until the dictator's death.

Pilar Eva Palacio grew up, then, among orchids on the part of Venezuela and helical surfaces on the part of her father. But from a very early age she fell for orchids. She did it, as is logical, to protect her imagination from the transcendental curves, homogeneous coordinates or osculating planes that the mathematician traversed, swearing, however, to publish books like him, albeit funnier.

That is why our author continued writing after leaving her Pan. Until now she had published individual stories, but she could not get her book published, that volume once again presided over on the cover by the last name Palacio, but preceded by her own name, Pilar Eva, and whose title does not resemble at all the 'Geometric Theory of Conic Sections' or 'Plane and Skew Curves'.

For half my life I have earned my living through my profession as a mathematics teacher. Wishing to obtain Venezuelan nationality, I express to you my willingness to acquire it by accompanying this application with the legal documents. I swear to comply with and respect the Constitution and Laws of the Republic.

Ángel Palacio Gros as a teacher was very strict and the students were very afraid of the 'Angel of Spain'. But Palacio Gros was also a good teacher, knowledgeable about the subjects he taught. The retired professor of Electrical Engineering, Luis Loreto, was his student in the subject Mathematical Analysis II and reports that: "Palacio Gros was an excellent speaker, a true actor. I think that even he had programmed the moment in which his cigar would go out. In one of the first classes, when he finished explaining the subject of the integral according to Riemann, he turned his back to the blackboard and spread his arms, as if to say, there it is! From the middle of the lecture theatre came the trembling voice of a student asking for an example, please. Palacio, with his proud Spanish accent, told him: 'Young man: the example is the surrender of intelligence'. I always quote this to my students."

I was a student of Professor Palacio Gros at the Colegio América and then one of his 200 students at the Central University in the Faculty of Engineering. His passion for mathematics did not remain in the four walls where he taught, cigar in hand. He was an extraordinary teacher, an impeccable person and a constant inspiration for me. From the year 1967 to today (2017), I try to follow in his footsteps. I am a teacher and researcher of mathematical education. I am in the process of writing a book where his work will be featured. My line is the development of an innovative methodology under the name 'Teaching of Mathematics with a Humanist Approach'. I think the name honours Professor Palacios Gros, my very dear and respected mathematics teacher. ...

Although the task is far beyond my capacity, I have accepted it, since it would be intolerable to refuse to add one more voice of condolence, however modest, to the millions of voices that, over the entire surface of the Earth today lament the loss not only of the physical and mathematical genius, but also of the man who knew how to leave the laboratory for a moment in defence of human dignity. Of the man who knew how to put the immense weight of his talent and his prestige on the scales of justice.

Palacio Gros continued to 'live' inside Venezuela. When we visited him in Madrid it was an event for him: he wanted to know about so-and-so, about the Faculty of the Central University, etc.