Juan Madrid will, next Monday, 12th September, visit the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna, where he will meet researchers of the Institute and will be shown around the workshops. He will then go up to the Teide Observatory, Izaña (Tenerife), to get to know the telescopes there. The next day he will visit the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, in Garafía (La Palma), where he will again go round the many telescopes, among them the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC). On Thursday, he will visit the Museum of Science and the Cosmos, of Museums of Tenerife.

This writer, considered one of the Mathers of the Spanish crime novel, will in this way join the multicultural project “En un lugar del Universo…” designed to celebrate the IV centenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, by blending literature and astronomy. As well as the IAC, the international scientific institutions which are members of the Canary Island Observatories, the Museum of Science and the Cosmos of Museums of Tenerife and the Instituto Cervantes are supporting the project, and funded by the Severo Ochoa Programme. In the framework of the initiative, well know figures of literature in Spanish have been invited to participate in the production of a volume of short stories, inspired by astronomy, which will be used to raise money to help sufferers from Alzheimer’s disease.

Juan Madrid is a writer, scriptwriter, and journalist from Malaga. He has a degree in contemporary history from the University of Salamanca. He began work as an editor, in 1973, on Cambio 16 magazine, but quickly moved to literature. In 1980, he published his first novel,  A kiss from a friend, after being runner-up for the prize offered by the collection Crime Circle, by the publisher Sedmay. He is the author of chronicles, short stories, stories for infants and tales for young people, as well as scripts for comics, cinema, and television,  such as Brigada Central, the first Spanish police series. He also writes novels, among which we can pick out Tanger (Tangiers) and Dias Contados (Numbered days), both of which were turned into films. The latter was the winner of the Golden Shell at the International Cinema Festival of San Sebastian in 1994. His work has been translated into 16 languages and he is a professor at institutions such as the International School of Cinema and TV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba, in the field of Theory of the Short Story, and the Fuentetaja School of Creative Writing, Madrid. His last book Wet men are not afraid of the rain, won the XIV Unicaja Prize “Fernando Quiñones” for novels in 2012.

Related previous press releases:

• Well known Spanish literary personalities visit the Canary Island Observatories
• The writer Elsa Lopez learns first hand the multidisciplinary work done at the IAC
• The writer Elsa Lopez visits the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory within the framework of the project "En un lugar del Universo..."
• Rosa Montero will visit the IAC and the Canary Observatories
• Antonio Tabares visits the IAC and the Canary Island Observatories
• ROSA MONTERO: "Looking up at the sky makes us more human, more civilized, less mean"
• Juan Cruz visits the IAC and the Canary Island Observatories
• JUAN CRUZ: “The Canaries has to make a claim for itself as a place for science and technology"
• ANTONIO TABARES: “Ciencia y literatura tienen más en común de lo que a priori parece”
• ANTONIO TABARES: “Science and literature have more in common than you might think”