the Markina doctor, the physical damage to his sight was irreparable, in such a way that he lost his left eye, which was replaced by one artificial. At the age of four he began to go to the rural school attached to the parish, financed by the farmhouses and the neighbourhood residents. The aftermath of the accident influenced José María's future temperament, as well as the over-protection that his mother devoted to him from then on. Given his visual disability and his family upbringing, instead of playing and misbehaving like other children, his character was not very expansive: shy, quiet, and observant. Jose Maria was an intelligent kid with little physical strength. In this way, the boy began to adopt an austere, modest and practical character, close to his pragmatic mother, who despite being illiterate, she appreciated his inclination for letters and literature, and encouraged him when he turned twelve to go to the Minor Seminary of Castillo Elejabeitia. There he put on the glasses that hid his handicap, and his priestly vocation was strengthened. In the seminary he discovered a new world, but he remained faithful to his origin, to the peasant land in which he had grown up and where he learned from his mother the value of practical work as an element of subsistence in a modest farmhouse. Coming from a monolingual environment of his Basque language in all social spheres, in the seminary he studied above all general culture in the two permitted languages, Spanish and Latin. Four years later, he joined the recently inaugurated Diocesan Seminary of Vitoria. Seminary of Vitoria: 1931-1936 Arizmendiarrieta was at the Seminary at the time of the Second Spanish Republic, precisely when social issues re-emerged. The seminarians, in addition to studying Philosophy and Theology, studied the social encyclical Quadragessimo Anno by Pius XI. Consequently, he delved into the spirituality of the Priestly Movement of Vitoria, having Joaquin Goikoetxeandia and Juan Thalamas as special tutors. And he assumed the motto of the first: "Be a priest, always and in everything a priest." Great importance was attached to values such as bodily austerity, punctuality, silence, industriousness, hygiene and presentation, both physical and teaching materials. In the Seminary there were two groups, one was the youngest and most thoughtless, who played football and Basque pelota, and the other was the mature, serious and responsible group who walked thinking about the problems of the