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In July we received the sad news about the death of our colleague Gabriel Pons from San Salvador. Many of us remember his brilliant interventions during the debates in the 2nd Ecomaterials Conference in Santa Clara, his explanations and theories concerning earth constructions to resist earthquakes.

Throughout his long and broad professional career the incident that stands out is when young Engineer Pons retired from his job as director of rural constructions because the ministry forbid him to build adobe houses. Shortly thereafter it was discovered that before leaving, Pons had already built at least the model house and now the farming families were fighting to see who could live in it.

During one period Gabriel was appointed as ambassador for El Salvador in Switzerland: “The civil government made use of my French language abilities so they could avoid appointing a military person”. Over the years he attended numerous students and teachers from around the world with advice and instruction about building with earth. He joined EcoSouth after the earthquakes in 2001.

Gabriel Pons died at the age of 85, shortly after finishing a book entitled “About the importance of revising housing politics”, that will be published by the National University of Salvador. Students and teachers from the University collected his newspaper articles from past decades and have assembled them and we hope that soon we can publish parts of the book on this website.