Manuel Perales

I was born in 1954, in Spain, in Valencia, then I lived in France where my parents emigrated, in the south, first to Istres, then near Marseille, when I was only nine months old. A little more than a year later, I became paraplegic when I was a little more than a year old, due to a viral disease that affected my spinal cord. This prompted me at a very young age to distract myself through drawing, at the same time as an irresistible passion was born in me for everything that flies, aviation, and the men who have marked its history. Over the years, I practiced drawing in a self-taught way, combining it with aeronautical themes and contemporary history.

Following the advice of my school counsellors, I studied law for three years, but without any real interest for me, spending more time drawing portraits of my teachers during class hours than taking notes, and that said in passing, I still obtained my first D.E.U.G. in Law!

The turning point in my life came when, after a long effort, I managed to meet the heroes of my youth, such as Pierre Clostermann, with whom I had the privilege of sharing a friendship of almost twenty years, and to produce with his collaboration a comic book adaptation of his famous "Le Grand Cirque", as well as with Peter Townsend, the hero of the Battle of Britain, and finally to form a friendship with the Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland. Since then, I have had no other main occupation than to draw, especially planes and the history of their pilots, without losing for a single moment the reflex of any aviation enthusiast: to raise my eyes to the sky when a flight of birds or a trail of condensation passes by.

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