In the 80s, Manuel was famous for solving the Rubik’s Cube in an instant – now, he explains to us how it turned into something serious

Em 1982, Manuel Galrinho was something of a celebrity in Portugal thanks to the record time of 25.8 seconds in which he solved the newly invented Rubik’s cubealso known as a Rubik’s cube. After being crowned national champion in a televised competition, he became a familiar face to the general public. On the street, some asked him to autograph the cubes they had. Others sang “The Boy with the Rubik’s Cube”, a song by Lara Li that played repeatedly on the radio, when they saw him pass by. At the restaurant, dessert was offered to her if she could make the cube right away.

Then aged 23, he had seen the colorful object for the first time half a year earlier, during a holiday in the Algarve, in the hands of a group of German boys. Intrigued, he decided to look for one like it when he returned home to Setúbal. “I think they were already sold in Portugal, but I didn’t find any”, he recalls on the phone with Expresso. “I had to ask my father, who lived in Germany, and a friend I had in Belgium, to send me one.”