Daniel Izeddin (text and video)
Updated Sunday, February 18, 2024-02:00
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Immerse yourself in the universe of the ALE Association! (
Cultural Association of LEGO Construction Fans in Spain
) is to enter a world where
creativity and passion
come together around tiny
interconnectable plastic blocks,
and where the limits to your creations are only set by your imagination. We visited them at one of their annual conventions, a weekend-long event that attracts Lego lovers from all over the country. During this fascinating annual meeting, we were able to meet Lego fans like Daniel Zeló and his mother, known in this
Legonian
world as 'Daniracer' and 'Mamiracer', who captivate with their
spectacular city dioramas
and were finalists in the television program ' LEGO Masters'. With the help of José Luis González we also delve into the modality called
Great Ball Contraption
(GBC), impressive
mechanized constructions that transport balls.
We also spoke with Luis Enrique López, a fan of the
Lego architectural series
who in recent times has become interested in building ships (large and small) and who acted as our guide.
QUESTION.- Where are we?
Luis Enrique López
.- At the La Cueva Sports Center, in
Fuenlabrada.
Every year, the city council gives it to us to hold our annual exhibition, which lasts an entire weekend.
Q.- What constructions have you brought to exhibit?
Luis Enrique López
.- During the last few months I have taken to making boats. Previously I had dedicated myself to making houses and other types of things, but well,
I wanted to make boats
, and all the ones I have been building are the ones I have brought. They are of all types: merchant, passenger... there are even a couple of warships, a theme that Lego, obviously, never uses in its sets, but hey, it was a design that I wanted to do.
Q.- So there are constructions that do not follow designs previously made by the company that you can follow?
Luis Enrique López
.- Of the ships that I have brought, one is borrowed, which is the Titanic (the big one, because I have a small one), and that is a Lego set that they sell with its box, its instructions, etc. From my collection of ships I have one that is a container ship, a container from the Maersk shipping company, which is also another set that Lego released many years ago. The rest are
instructions that I have bought on the internet
and with parts that I have, and buying some that I was missing, is how I have been building those other boats.
Luis Enrique, observing some of his ships.
Q.- So there are people who have dedicated themselves to making completely personalized designs.
Luis Enrique López
.- Yes, yes.
Q.- How long did it take you to make, for example, the Titanic?
Luis Enrique López
.- The colleague who gave it to me gave it to me assembled, so I disassembled it and reassembled it. It was practically four weeks between two and three hours a day, in the afternoons, quietly. Of course, I enjoyed putting it together, because of course,
if they give it to you assembled and you bring it here, then you haven't enjoyed it.
The smallest one may have lasted me a couple of hours, because
it is a scale called micro
, and it is a little boat that has very few parts and that takes half an hour to an hour to assemble.
Q.- How did you start with this hobby?
Luis Enrique López
.- Giving my son, who was little at that time, a Lego set,
a pirate ship.
We had a great time putting it together, but then it was something that stayed there, and about 14 years ago my son gave me
the London Bridge,
which is a large Lego set, and my hobby started again.
'Cuatro Torres Business Area' in Madrid, built by Luis Enrique López.
Q.- What do you do later with the assembled sets?
Luis Enrique López
.- I think we all have the problem of keeping them at home, except in cases where
their partners are Lego fans,
and then they don't mind having
the whole house dedicated to Lego.
The rest of us who don't have that advantage, in the end... For example, I have been making these boats, I have been keeping them in boxes in the storage room, and it is a collection that I hope to exhibit three times. I have already presented it in Colmenar, now we are here in Fuenlabrada and then we want to go to Utebo, in Zaragoza. From then on I have already seen them a lot, so they no longer excite me, and what I will do is
dismantle them and put the pieces back in their little boxes.
Q.- I suppose you will photograph them first.
Luis Enrique López
.- Yes, of course, in the end you take a thousand photographs, those who come to the exhibitions, the other members of the association who take videos...In the end there is always a record. But come on, it's rare to have a set or design for many years. There are sets that I do keep in their box, such as the ship I was telling you about, the Maersk.
I have its original box and instructions and I keep everything inside.
I half disassemble it a little and put it away. And that goes in the storage room. But then I have many sets that are smaller and maybe you can fit ten in a plastic box. And of course, it doesn't take up the same space as if the boxes were there.
I enjoy riding them. In fact, there are sets that have an exorbitant price, read the Titanic that has a price of about 680 euros, which means you say, I'm not going to spend that money on a set. What do I do? Well, thanks to this fluke that there are colleagues who leave them to me, I dismantle them, assemble them and I have taken away the hassle of assembling the set, because
what I really like is assembling them.
It's what you spend time with and enjoy. From the Lego range,
the only thing I collect, because I have all the ones they have released, is the architecture series,
because I really like architecture. But yes, I have it and I have assembled it, and the boxes are open, and the bags are torn to remove the pieces. Then, yes, I keep the parts, the instructions and the box.
I have all 54 architecture sets.
During that time we made several exhibitions about it.
Q.- Are you an architect?
Luis Enrique López
.- I would have liked to be, but no, I studied IT and I have been responsible for IT in some companies, a consultant in others... until I retired.
Q.- What are your favorite constructions?
Luis Enrique López
.- A building that is very simple but that I love is
the German pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich
, which was the building that represented their country at the Barcelona International Exhibition of 1929. Another What I really like is the
Bauhaus building in Dessau,
Germany.
They are relatively simple sets but for me they have something special because of the architecture.
Another one that I was very satisfied with is the
Taj Majal.
Lego has a small set of the Taj Majal, but there is only the building. Behind it is the Garden of Life, with a wall and a gate, and what I did was
glue a design made by me to the Lego set,
which was the Garden of Life, with the canals, with the plants, the trees, the wall and the door, which is in a style similar to that of the Taj Mahal, what happens is that the Taj Mahal was made in white and the door is brown.
Bauhaus building in Dessau, one of Luis Enrique's favorite buildings.
'DANIRACER' AND 'MAMIRACER'
QUESTION- How did you start with this hobby?
Daniel Zeló (Daniracer).-
My mother, 'Mamiracer', bought me Lego when I was little. He was wrong, I liked it, and from there we made cities between the two of us.
Q.- They are special cities, right?
Daniracer.-
They are special cities, because
I always try to get the children to participate in some way in the diorama
. In this case they can no longer play, because of course, it is already exposed, but
they can operate some parts of the model with the remote control.
Q.- What does your diorama consist of?
Daniracer.-
Well, this diorama is, in reality, a mixture of several things. For example, we have
a ball system, a machine that moves balls,
and then I have mixed it with other things like the city, which in this case is spatial, with different games.
Q.- You were in a television contest, right?
Daniracer.-
I thought who was going to go better with than my mother. So we already do the casting together, we live together, we understand each other sometimes, other times we don't...we argue a little...I thought that that television game was perfect, and also
a mother and son couple is difficult to find,
and that also build cool things...It was called Lego Masters Spain, and we were finalists. A couple of Valencian boys beat us and we came second. They played it on Antena 3.
'Daniracer' and 'Mamiracer' in front of their diorama.
Q.- How was the casting?
Daniracer.-
They asked us to make a ball, and with loose pieces that had nothing to do with each other we made a large sphere.
Mamiracer.-
And then you had to put that sphere like in a story... There they were already eliminating people and they caught us. We got in to see what the casting was like and in the end...
Daniracer.-
I was quite clear that in the end we were going to enter because the rest were very common couples: two boys, two girls, but there was no mother and son, we were the only ones. It is very good for me to share her hobby with her because then at home there are no discussions about how much Lego there is...
Mamiracer.-
Of course, but sometimes I don't have that much desire to build and he starts to harass me... 'Come on, yes, come on, come on, there's a week left until the exhibition, we have to do it.'
Another member of the association, showing its medieval construction.
Q.- Any project that you want to highlight?
Daniracer.-
I have made a replica of the Canfranc station, which was like the link between France and Spain, and which measures about three meters.
GREAT BALL CONTRAPTION
Q.- What is the Great Ball Contraption (GBC)?
José Luis González.-
The GBC consists of a series of machines
that are made with Lego Technic pieces and transport balls from one machine to another
with a gap that is already stipulated to be able to make circuits.
Q.- What characteristics does this circuit have?
José Luis González.-
It is 15 meters long
and 200 balls are working
. I'm testing each machine separately and then I put them all together. We do it between my wife and me. It takes a long time, because you don't make a machine the first time and it works. You do it, it doesn't work, you undo it, you do it again... It still doesn't work. Then they come out with less time, but I have been learning for many years.
Q.- How did you start?
José Luis González.-
I started with Lego robotics, which is the cheapest there is,
you can get a programmable module for just over 300 euros.
For example, the car I have there is a
transformer
. You can also see that machine, which is a
spirograph
. I suppose that when you were little you must have had some plastic stencils that they sold with some gears and you turned them around with a pen. That is a machine that consists of three gearboxes of eight, four and eight speeds, and depending on how you put it, it makes you one kind of drawing or it makes you another.
Part of a GBC construction.
At an exhibition in Portugal I coincided with Maico Arts, which has the most in Europe, more than 200 modules, and then I saw it and thought... I have to do this myself.
Some you see by reverse engineering, others share data...
and then you modify it... At the beginning, as I told you, you assemble and disassemble a lot, because they don't work for you.
Q.- Tell me about this construction that we are seeing.
José Luis González.-
This one has a lot of synchronization. All the movements are made with a single motor: the movement of the ferris wheel that raises the balls, the movement of this step that separates them two by two, and
each of the robots that pass each other's balls in turn. to another.
In short, it is an engine for all movements. Each module has only one motor, except one that has none. I spent a couple of months doing it, because I had already done many others before. The first ones I made were, maybe, close to a year old and the balls kept falling out... The balls were on the ground longer than in the machine.
The creator is a Japanese and
I reverse engineered it.
He makes very few machines and they are all quite fiddly. The most famous is that other machine, called 'Catch and Release', by a Japanese creator called Akiyuki, who is perhaps the most famous of all. He goes to quite a few exhibitions, and all of us who are in this environment copy his machines, because the truth is that they are very attractive. In Spain there are four or five people who can do this, and in Madrid I am alone. When I make a circuit like this I then publish it on my YouTube channel.
ALE ASSOCIATION!
QUESTION- When did the association start?
Antonio José Fernández
(president of ALE!).- We started about 13 years ago, a group of friends who had this
plastic toy in common,
we decided to found an association and give it a little more professional touch,
so to speak. There are about 70 of us right now, from all over Spain. The name responds to ALE, which is the acronym for Lego Fans of Spain, and
brick
, which is brick in English, which is the English name of each piece, the generic Lego piece. Once a year we meet in Fuenlabrada to be together and share the projects we have, new creations... and it is called Alebricks plus the name of each year. We have already had 11 editions.