His sister Carmen tells me about him: “Antonio was born in Mula, before our parents sold the shoe store they had there and moved to Murcia with the whole family, in order to give us more opportunities. I remember well how he was as a child: a whirlwind, very restless, funny… He drew non-stop, modeled with plasticine, invented a thousand things. I was only 17 months older and we spent a lot of time together, we made our own games… The Monopoly boards, for example. Or we’d crawl into a closet and play with dashboards we’ve made, like we’re in a spaceship. And so on and so forth; he was creative to the core.”

And he continues: “As a child, he won several contests. One of plasticine nativity scenes, in Galerías Preciados. And another in which he won the first prize in his category, at about 5 years old, and Juan, at 13, a special prize in his. It was our mother who encouraged them to participate and took us there. They had to draw the Cathedral of Murcia from life; Juan will remember better.” Carmen is referring to her brother Juan Álvarez Montalbán, one of the most renowned comic artists we have in our region, a visual designer, a DIP colleague, partner and ally of her brother in many creative projects, which completes the fact: that prize that Carmen cites, created especially in view of the result, was endowed with 25,000 pesetas from the year 1973! Of course, in jewelry from Joyería Carreras, a sponsoring business.

Antonio, who studied a degree in Computer Science, was one of those people who could disassemble a machine in all its parts, reassemble it and make it work. He was the founder of the advertising agency A2 Comunicación e Imagen, from which he tackled numerous graphic and multimedia design works.
With his brother Juan and Jorge Gómez as directors, Antonio was the executive producer of a pioneering and highly successful event: the Salón del Manga y la Cultura Japonesa, Murcia se remanga, with an annual edition in Murcia held from 2010 to today; another in Cartagena, Cartagena rolls up its sleeves, and the last one, created in 2022, Lorca rolls up its sleeves. Pioneering, joyful and fun events, which summon tens of thousands of otakus of all ages every year to spend a few days of healthy fun and diverse learning.