Photography: Lupe de la Vallina.
Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa his birthday is today. Writer, journalist and inventor, he is one of the most read contemporary authors here and around the world. To celebrate, let's take a look at some of his countless creative writing in this selection.
Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa
Born in 1936 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and he grew up in the Spanish Sahara after the beginning of the Civil War, a fact that influenced his later literary career. He returned to the Canary Islands in his adolescence and worked as a diving teacher before going to Madrid to study Journalism. He was a correspondent for La Vanguardia and Spanish Television.
More than adventurous in spirit, for example, when he finished Journalism he He bought a sailboat with a couple of friends to sail to Polynesia. Lover of readings by the greats like Stevenson, Verne, Conrad or Melville, Its more than a hundred titles published have been translated into Chinese, Bulgarian, Russian or Arabic, and has sold 32 million all over the world.
Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa — selection of books
Sand and wind
This book takes us to the author's early years in Western Sahara from Morocco where, at first, he believed he could not bear the loneliness. Upon meeting the Sahrawis, his opinion will change and the love of that people for telling stories gets so deep inside him that it will mark many of his later works.
Memories of Cienfuegos
Cienfuegos is perhaps the most famous character by Vázquez-Figueroa. He traveled with Columbus to the New World and toured it, so he has become the character of the Old Continent who accumulates the most knowledge about paths and about that new, still unknown. He Tratado de tordesillas He established them between the Spanish and the Portuguese for the distribution of the navigation routes with him.
These are your memories when he questions him Marquis of Peñagrande, special envoy of Carlos V. In them he will tell the essential milestones of the discovery of America, its culture, people, food, wonders and dangers.
Pirates
Classic story full of action, emotions and intrigue, stars an old British privateer and a very young Spanish pearl diver who circumstances lead to the ship of the feared Jacare Jack.
So we have combat on the high seas, cunning characters and the fate of a Spanish family living in the Caribbean during the time of the black trade.
For lovers of traditional pirates.
Tuareg
One of the best known, perhaps because It was made into a film in 1984. with Mark Harmon as the protagonist. To better understand the Tuareg people, with moral codes different from those of the Arabs and unrivaled in terms of surviving in the most adverse conditions.
The protagonist of this novel is the noble Inmouchar Gazel Sayah, master of an infinite expanse of desert. One day they arrive at the camp two fugitives coming from the north, and Sayah welcomes them following the sacred laws of hospitality. But then he will find himself involved in an adventure full of dangers that could cost him his life.
A more or less continuation title is The last Tuareg, which takes place in the Mali desert, where extremists trying to create a radical Islamist state are staining the good name of the Tuaregs with blood. The protagonist is Mugtar Gazelle, a peaceful truck driver who knows the desert well, who will have to face another extreme situation.
Greed
We come to Madrid with Humberto Alejandro Espinosa de Mendoza Spencer-Wallis, a rich aristocrat, single and bon vivant, who one day receives a strange visit that will change his life. Unintentionally, an important government agency has chosen him to locate and dismantle a ppowerful financial group specialized in the money laundering.
So using your excellent connections social and with the help of a wealthy Ecuadorian, Humberto will infiltrate a dark world of corruption, violence and dirty money.
under seven seas
How to Live Aligned with diver Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa made countless dives and this title is a story of the extraordinary adventure with two companions on a sailboat from the Spanish coast to the South Seas.
For lovers of travel and the sea in all its extension of fascination and mystery in the always attractive nature beneath its surface.
Cumbrevieja
After the recent and destructive volcano eruption Old Summit of La Palma, Vázquez-Figueroa published this novel last year in which he tells us of the character of its inhabitants through the intelligent gaze of a Street dog who never ceases to be amazed by the surreal behaviors of human beings.
With the complaint touch that is in almost all of his work, is a wake up call in the face of the mismanagement of vital resources such as water and abuses of power and a reflection on the colossal force of nature. Furthermore, he claims values such as family and generosity, always more evident in extreme situations.