Alfonso was born in a tiny village north of Segovia, Spain. He was the first member of his family to go to university and studied Physics and Astrophysics in Bilbao and Madrid. After a short period away from academia, working for a technology company, he met Prof. Richard Ellis in Erice, Sicily, and the rest, as they say, is history... Richard supervised Alfonso’s PhD in Durham on galaxy evolution in, what was considered at the time, high-redshift clusters. After a couple of short postdocs in Durham and Cambridge, Alfonso became a Royal Society University Research Fellow, spending the first five years of his fellowship at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. In 1999 he moved to the University of Nottingham and joined the then new Astronomy Group as a research fellow and lecturer. He subsequently became Professor of Astronomy in 2008. In 2014 he took over from Mike as Head of the Nottingham Astronomy Group, where he continues to work. Alfonso’s research focuses on understanding the physical processes that shape galaxies and their evolution – mainly from an observational point-of-view, but also in close collaboration with theorists and instrument builders. Much of his research has been in productive and enjoyable collaboration with Mike – having co-authored 48 papers to-date (ADS). Alfonso is also an enthusiastic and committed teacher and mentor. He has had – and continues to have – very many excellent PhD students and postdocs who, according to him, have done most of the work. Alfonso intends to continue working in Astronomy for a few more years, before moving on to the next stage of his career...he plans to enrol in Le Cordon Bleu õ cookery school after retirement!