The day she arrived at the laboratory and saw that the mice were moving again, Zaida Álvarez (Barcelona, 1984) could not help but shudder. Behind her lay more than six years of research, from Monday to Sunday, and a risky bet to outsmart evolution and repair the irreparable: the central nervous system of a mammal. "It was mind-blowing. Those animals, which had a severe spinal cord injury and were paralyzed, were walking again," she recounts, still moved, this bioengineer and researcher at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

Bruna's favorite subject is physical education, like most children her age. She enjoys playing tag and fish with her friends in the playground, and also the activities she does outside of school, such as swimming and drawing with her little brother, Pau. Unlike other 7-year-olds, however, she does rehabilitation twice a week at the Institut Guttmann to improve her handling of the wheelchair she has used since she was very young. When she was just one month old, she was diagnosed with a tumor pressing on her spinal cord. She was treated with chemotherapy at the Sant Joan de Déu Hospital, and the cancer eventually disappeared. But the spinal cord injury that prevents her from walking will always be with her.