They lived intensely until AIDS ruined everything.

My companion squirmed in his seat. Was he bored, didn't like it...? Actually, he was crying . It wasn't a climactic moment, it wasn't the end of the film. And yet, he couldn't stop crying. It was a couple of years ago, watching 120 Beats Per Minute , a French film about a group of kids ravaged by AIDS in the 1990s. " I was moved by how intensely they lived , by the pain that the disease had cut short that strong will to live," he explained to me as we left. It was sadness, frustration, a "why them?"

I had that same feeling watching Romería , Carla Simón 's film that tells the story of her parents , who died from heroin and AIDS . They loved their youth, they loved the sea, they loved each other. They were just beginning to live. And everything went to hell.

Romería 's story is also that of Xulia Alonso - a life disturbingly parallel to that of Carla Simón's parents - in Futuro imperfecto : "We had traveled together to the hell (of heroin) where we were locked up for a few years. It was hard for us to get out, but it left its mark: we were HIV positive ." Her partner, Nico, also died of AIDS.

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, HIV was something very unknown, something that wasn't talked about , something that was very scary. It was books and movies that brought us back to that lost generation.

This is what happens when the memoirs of Patti Smith ( Just Kids ) or André Leon Talley ( In the Fashion Trenches ) transport you to New York in the 70s and 80s. AIDS also took its toll on beautiful, fun-loving, talented young people there. Robert Mapplethorpe, Tina Chow, Halston...

" His love of life couldn't save him . It was the first time I knew he was going to die," writes Patti Smith about one of her last encounters with Mapplethorpe. The cover of the singer's book, with her soul mate, has that glow of a youthful photo. So does Xulia's. It's the smiles, the glances, the lightness of their bodies. " I wanted to be free and, above all, happy."

They remind me of the '80s photos of my parents. So young, so handsome, so happy . They too knew stories frustrated by drugs. Everyone in their country home knows one. The other day, at a family meal, my uncle was remembering his friend A. Everything looked promising for that privileged kid from the village. "When we had 500 pesetas, they gave him 5,000." And then, heroin ruined everything.