Almost 25 years of activity, interviews and articles on everything related to the Spectrum, a podcast followed by thousands of fans, a book that entered the top ten bestsellers in Spain. This and more is El Mundo del Spectrum (www.elmundodelspectrum.com), the reference website for the Spanish-speaking (but not only) user community of the most notorious Sinclair computer. We talk about it with three members of the tireless team behind it: Alejandro Ibañez, Javier Ortiz and Jesús Martinez.

Let's start with the presentations: tell us something about yourselves...

Alejandro: My name is Alejandro Ibáñez and I am an entrepreneur of new technologies, lover of old ones and creator of EMS. I have had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum since I was a child, which forever left a mark on me both personally and, above all, professionally. I am also a presenter and director of the podcast. I live in Zaragoza and every day I strive to innovate by analysing the lessons of the past in those creative, risky and improvised origins that stood for the Spectrum.

Javi: I'm Javi Ortiz, an EMS member who started with a grey Plus 2 in 1986/87. A machine that left a mark on me and is still more than a hobby for me: it is passion and great devotion. Unfortunately I don't have a stable job... I have been a postman for many years, worked in factories, couriers, etc... A complete evolution.

JMV: My name is Jesús Martínez, but I have dedicated myself to graphic humour for 25 years and since then I have nicknamed myself JMV. That's how I sign all of my work. I published many comics, particularly parodic ones (Star Wars or The Lord of the Rings) and in the past I worked with a character very popular in Spanish universities called Bok. I worked for several years for the El Jueves magazine. a reference for graphic humour in Spain for decades; currently I produce a weekly cartoon for the El Mundo newspaper. Since 1998 I have also been an architect and worked in the field of administration designing and at institutional buildings.

How did your involvement with the Spectrum, and the "retro" scene in particular, start?
Alejandro: Shortly after the commercial "death" of the Spectrum, I came across a PC emulator with games. Being able to use my current computer to play all those titles that were still in my memory caused a change of perspective that years later, when I discovered the Internet, made me wish to create EMS.

Javi: Like Alejandro, many of us returned to the Spectrum after its commercial end with that wonderful invention called emulation. Pedro Gimeno's emulator, distributed by PC Mania, allowed us to revive our beloved machine on a powerful PC... it was magic! I have been on the Spanish Spectrum scene almost from the beginning, that is, since 2000, when I joined the legendary es.comp.sistemas.sinclair (the Spanish newsgroup about the Spectrum and other machines by Sir Clive). I was also part of the CEZGS group and subsequently of Retroworks (of which I am still a member).

JMV: Around 1998 I started collaborating with Alejandro on EMS, which was born not long before. I wrote some simple articles and drew the illustrations for each monthly edition. Other than that, I've always been tied to the Spectrum as a fan and was part of a user club where we exchanged information and tapes. With the third version of EMS, Alejandro brought us together with Javi Ortiz and Juanfra to relaunch the website, which has become a much richer compendium of articles and opinions. It was 2010, but a few years later we launched the podcast and the size of our work has been significantly expanded. Javi, Alejandro, Juanfra and me are great friends. We spent many years doing things together and there is high esteem between us. Without such a basis, it would be impossible to carry out many projects.

What motivated you to create the site and the book?
Alejandro: In 1996 I discovered the Internet and its ability to reach people all over the world. I studied how to create Web pages and thought to pay homage to Microhobby magazine by creating a site with different sections to be updated every month. At that time there was nothing like it, and I also wanted it to look very attractive and feature the best possible content. These ingredients remain the fundamental pillar of all of our releases: web, podcasts and books. Over time, other contributors have joined the site. Today, after almost 25 years, the EMS team is fantastic.

Years ago the idea of writing a book on the Spectrum was born, and we thought about it for a long time. We wanted to create a quality product in both text and design, but it took a lot. Since we could not devote the necessary time to it, it remained in a stand-by state until Manu Rico kicked off and we then followed. We began working at the second book, El Mundo Del Spectrum Plus, soon after releasing the first. The question we ask ourselves now is: will there be a third volume to conclude a trilogy?

Javi: I can add little to what Alejandro said. I will only say that without the podcast there would be no books, and I had something to do with it, by suggesting that it should be created for my participation in Fasebonus, one of the main retro podcasts in Spain.

JMV: The book came out in 2016 from a common project. We thought it was a good idea to give the website and its contents an editorial form as a printed text. We wanted to give importance to design (David Saavedra did an excellent job) and to provide the book with a general content that encompassed the whole dimension of the Spectrum phenomenon, its past and present, avoiding an exclusively nostalgic orientation (even if the simple fact of being dedicated to the Spectrum implies that there is also a part of that). Manu Rico, a friend of the site, offered himself to write a first draft because our daily chores did not allow us to go on with the project as we would have liked. His work has been fundamental. In January 2016, we put down a scheme of the first chapter, about 6,000 words, and from there we created a guideline to assemble it correctly. In September of that year, we managed to publish the book with a lot of effort.

How satisfied are you with the site and the book?
Alejandro: EMS has given me a lot of joy. It allowed me to meet many good people, some of whom have become my friends. I have been able to communicate with thousands of people who share my hobby. We entered the top ten best-selling book chart in Spain, something I never imagined. With the podcast I was able to create content listened to by thousands of people for each program. And of course, the creation of that first website in 1996 helped me become more professional on the Internet and make a living today. I could not be more grateful for this project.

Javi: I'm proud of the books, the site and the podcasts. These in particular allowed us to meet people who are very important for everything that the Spectrum stands for, and create audio documentation of them: Jon Ritman, Andrew Hewson, Paco Pastor, Gabriel Nieto, Los Ruiz ... Many others (of the so-called Golden Age) have passed and will pass in front of our microphones. In addition, we also focus on the present, with a news section about the current creators who keep on giving life to this machine, which died commercially years ago, but is very much alive in terms of current developments. On the other hand, as a personal project, I have my YouTube channel, El Spectrumero Javi Ortiz, where since the beginning I have given much space to contemporary authors, supporting the invaluable activity of those like you, Alessandro, who are creating some real art with every new work of theirs.

JMV: The book is already in its third edition and has achieved extraordinary success, with over 5,000 copies sold. I sincerely believe that it is a beautiful book, very attractive, intentionally generalist but with rather exclusive and unpublished content. There are interviews with people like Ponce, Gabriel Nieto, Barbero, Prades, Paco Pastor, Rafa Gómez, in which things never told before are told. It is a text for the initiates, but not only. Although it is a book of considerable thickness, it had aspects that could be improved. In the second book we managed to go much further and I am convinced that it is better and deeper. Each of them covers different needs and fields, and they both complement each other very well.

Any Spectrum-related project for the future?
Alejandro: EMS is something alive and I don't know how it will evolve. In the near future, we will continue to cultivate the website that we launched a few months ago and that opened the fourth era. We also plan to improve our YouTube channel, which remains an open topic. Obviously we have other ideas, but we always keep them secret until they become reality. We are expert creators of hype.

As long as there is interest in what we do, we will be here. Thank you for contacting us and thank you for your work, we follow it closely.

Javi: As far as EMS is concerned, this is a team, we could call it a family, which I will always support and continue to try contributing to in my own small way. With the current website, we made a significant step forward, while the arrival of Darío Ruellan as a news editor has been a great acquisition. I don't want to forget our classmates who write articles like Kidsaguf, Deckard and others, they are also EMS. As for my channel, the same thing: stay on the same line and try to improve, but always, always, always strongly support homebrew authors.

JMV: Continue completing and documenting stories of the protagonists of those years to the best that we can through the podcast and articles in specialized magazines. Also keep on with the writing of books, perhaps with a third volume of EMS. I am sincerely convinced that it is necessary to approach the protagonists of that time and save their direct experiences. It is not enough to spread out on an armchair closed under a glass case, writing articles translated from English magazines and basing all your "work" on videos and texts made by other people. Nor is it worth to give up nostalgia from a supposedly erudite perspective. How can you talk about games and programmers of a computer with 40 years of existence, that was part of our youth, pretending not to do it with a certain amount of nostalgia? Sounds stupid. But you can reconsider that production as objectively as possible: not everything we thought to be wonderful is like that in fact.

Programs we watched with uncritical eyes are manifestly unplayable, and the companies we only knew from logos were sometimes full of incompetent people, greedy for money, or programmers dominated by teenage egos. It is an era that can be studied rigorously like any other. In short, as long as our (increasingly scarce) time allows us to do it, we will follow the entire EMS team with our work. Personally, I am preparing another book that moves beyond the 8-bit era and connects with other types of sectors and markets, and I also continue with my little work as a collaborator of Retro Gamer magazine together with a large management team and fantastic colleagues.