In the olden days, wood was not only a common building material, but the material par excellence. The etymology of madera (wood) reminds us of this, the word coming from materia (matter), and this in turn from mater, which for the Romans was not only ‘mother’ but also the quality of the ‘maternal’; that is, the ‘origin’, the ‘primary material’ or ‘raw material’. So when we say the word madera, we are at the very bottom of things, referring as much to the material with which things are made, as to a material with a life of its own...