[3] Noble was born in Sarrià, Barcelona, in 1870[a] as the son of Ernesto Noble Barber (1841–1920), an English insurance broker who was visiting southern Spain on business when he met his future wife, María de las Angustias Malvido Nocedo (1849–1921), an Andalusian lady from Jerez de la Frontera.

[2] Between 1885 and 1896 they lived first in La Rambla, Barcelona, and then in another house on the slopes of Tibidabo, in search of healthy air for a sickly son, Willis, who finally died in 1895 at the age of 21.

[1][7] It remains unclear how they met, but it was most likely Noble who approached him after getting word that Reeves was recruiting members of British Club of La Rambla to play football.

[1] Noble appears in what is regarded to be the oldest photograph of a football team in Spain, which depicts these two sides before the match at Can Tunis.

[4][5] Àngels went on to become a painter, marrying Enric Prat de la Riba, son of the former president of the Commonwealth of Catalonia.

[6] In the late 1920s, the building housed the so-called clinic of Doctor Escayola, dedicated to traumatology and surgery, but which in fact also functioned as a care center for terminally ill patients that even had a mortuary for the deceased.