Planas’s erotic doble-sentido (double-entendre) series based on the card game Tresillo was so successful that he quickly followed it up with a higher-quality series based on the equally popular game of billiards, hence El Noble Juego del Billar, the noble game of billiards. Even more than cards, billiards with its long hard cues, round balls and soft receiving pockets is the perfect vehicle for sexual innuendo, and Planas used it to the full – and beyond.

Many of the drawings, as needed, are captioned in both Castilian Spanish and the Catalan of Planas¹s native Barcelona. Among our favourites is ‘Carambola de facil execucio per estarse tocant las bolas/Carambola de facil ejecucion por estarse tocando las bolas’, which translates as ‘An easy-to-execute cannon shot because the balls are touching/being touched’.