The Mercado de Castilla falla announced on Monday the death of Antonio Platero, one of its defining figures and a man who lived through two very different chapters of the festival: the rise of a neighbourhood commission and the end of the most ambitious project Nou Campanar has ever known. His death was unexpected — on Saturday he had been at the casal as usual, his second home.

"How hard it will be to come down and not find you there," the commission wrote on social media. Although he no longer held the presidency, he was still the commission in every sense of the word.

Platero ran Mercado de Castilla for around ten terms in the final stretch of the last century. That was the period when the falla began to gain visibility: it made its debut in the belenes contest and, above all, the way the monument was approached began to change. After a hesitant start in the 1980s, falla prizes started to pile up. When he stepped down from the presidency he remained involved in several boards.

The last man of Nou Campanar

His name also became tied to the project Juan Armiñana launched in Nou Campanar, for a while the festival's great laboratory and the commission that planted the tallest monument in the history of the Fallas. Armiñana brought him in precisely for his knowledge of the fallero world. When the lean years came and many left or simply walked away, Platero took the presidency to try to save what remained.

There was no way. He had to face the final episode: the experimental falla that came down, and then, with no structure left, the signing of the commission's dissolution. That is why he was known as "the last man of Nou Campanar". He later returned to Mercado de Castilla — he had never really left — and also served at the Junta Central Fallera.

The commission closed its message with a promise to keep his spirit alive: "You leave an indelible mark on all of us."

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