Ricardo Armbruster

A rebel Christian (he married under scrutiny and press coverage following the Catholic and Lutheran rituals at a time of National Catholicism in Spain), Ricardo Armbruster died on Easter Sunday in April 1976, at the age of 32, in Ribadesella, Asturias (Spain), while scuba diving in search of eels and other sea species in the cold waters of the Cantabrian Sea.

Erika and Ricardo Armbruster's home in the Castillian countryside (La Corala) soon became a preferred stop for zoologists and naturalists in the early 1970s, who brought over every kind of fauna to be treated and cured, among them the famous naturalist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. This made the premises look more like a zoo than a private home. The property also became a hot spot for debates about democracy and ecology among Spanish intellectuals, artists and oligarchs who appreciated Armbruster's views on these subjects.

At an early age, Ricardo Armbruster and his family discovered that schooling and academic life were not going to be his preferred way of advancing personally. He developed a wide interest in animals and nature in the 1950s, spending long periods at the family farm in Camorritos, Spain, and becoming a respected naturalist at a very early stage. Soon afterwards, at the age of 17, he decided to travel and learn. He spent some time at several academies and jobs in Switzerland, Germany and London, before returning to Madrid and, from there, to the American continent. First, he traveled around the United States and Mexico with his brother and friends, before accepting a job at a bookstore in Bogotá, Colombia. After feeling frustrated by the fact that the store sold books by length for decoration rather than for reading, he felt the call of the wild, embarked on a trip to the south and disappeared in the Amazon rainforest.

Ricardo Armbruster Blecher, alias Nano ( Madrid, 1944 – Ribadesella, 1976) was a Spanish ecologist, adventurer and entrepreneur.