Alhadra Digital

By  Javier Carrasco

Ian Gibson was born in Dublin (1939). He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin and became a professor of Spanish literature at Belfast and London universities. In 1975 he decided to leave his academic life and became a writer, so he went to live to south France. He published his work The nationalistic repression of Granada in 1936 and the death of Federico García Lorca, which was banned in Spain under the dictator Franco. Later on, he moved to Madrid and began to write Lorca’s biography, the poet from Granada. He lived in a little village of Granada for thirteen years. In his own words, he describes the first time he met García Lorca in a second-hand bookshop in Dublin:

“It all began with Lorca for me. When you’re 18 and you stumble across a poet who speaks to you in a very personal way… I was beginning to learn the language at the time. I was 17 or 18, in a second-hand bookshop somewhere in Dublin. I suddenly came across a copy of Lorca’s Gypsy Ballad. I didn’t know the language, but something in those ballads got through to me… Irish literature has never lost its contact with the earth and Lorca is very earthy. His earth was Andalusian, mine was Irish, but the similarity… something enabled me to get into it. That began and went on and I discovered more about the man, his assassination…”.

Together with Hugh Thomas and Paul Preston, he belongs to the British hispanist group devoted to the study of recent Spanish history, specially the Second Republic and the Spanish Civil War.

His book “Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life” won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was named “Best Book of 1989″ by the New York Times and the Boston Globe.

He has also written books about the lives of the painter Salvador Dalí, The Shameful Live of Salvador Dalí, and Antonio Machado, Ligero de equipaje, and  about other writers such as Ruben Darío or Cela.

His first novel, “Viento del Sur” (Wind of the south, 2001), written in Spanish examines class, religion, family life, and public schools in British society through the fictitious autobiography of a character named John Hill, an English linguist and academic. It won favorable reviews in Spain.

Gibson has also worked in television programmes about his academic work in Spanish history, having served as historical consultant and even acting in one historical drama.

In 1984 he obtained the Spanish nationality and at present he lives in Madrid where he is preparing a biography about the Spanish film director Luis Buñuel. Fortunately, he feels Spain as his home better than any other country. Mr Gibson, thank you for your splendid books!

By Juan Antonio Heredia Rúiz  (4º ESO-B)

The men whom English King Edward the First (1239-1307) appointed to govern the Scots ruled unwisely and nearly all the people were discontented.

 Suddenly an army of Scots was raised. It was led by Sir William Wallace (Uilleam Uallas), a knight who was almost a giant in size. William Wallace’s men drove the English out of the country and Wallace was made the “Guardian of the Realm.”

 King Edward then led a great army against him at the Battle of Falkirk (1298). The Scottish soldiers were nearly all on foot. Wallace arranged them in hollow squares, spearmen on the outside, bowmen within. The English horsemen dashed vainly against the walls of spear-points. But King Edward now brought his archers to the front. Thousands of arrows flew from their bows and thousands of William Wallace’s men fell dead. The spears were broken and the Scots were defeated.

Wallace barely escaped with his life. He was afterwards betrayed to King Edward, who cruelly put him to death. He was hung, drawn and quartered in Smithfield, London.

By  Miguel Ángel López Segura   (4º ESO-B )

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel also known as the “Desert Fox” was the most famous German Field Marshal of World War II. He was born on 15 November 1891. He was the commander of the Deutsches Afrikakorps and afterwards in command of the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion at Normandy.

An enduring legacy of Rommel’s character is that he is also considered to be a humane military officer in contrast with many other figures of Nazi Germany.

His famous Afrikakorps was not accused of war crimes.

During World War I, Rommel fight in France, Romania and Italy.

Furthermore, orders to kill captured Jewish soldiers and civilians out of hand in all theatres of his command were defiantly ignored. Following the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, and while commanding the defence of Occupied France, his fortunes changed when he was suspected of involvement in the failed July 20 Plot of 1944 to kill Hitler and was forced to commit suicide.

He is the only member of the Third Reich establishment to have a museum dedicated to him.

Autora: Belalia Hajar. 1º de Bach. A

CHILDHOOD:

Barack Obama was born in 1961, Hawaii.

His mother was from Kansas, and his father was from Kenya. His parents divorced when he was four.

Barack´s moved to Indonesia; at the age of ten, he moved back to Honolulu (Hawaii) to go to better schools.

He moved to Chicago after graduating college in 1983. He thougt that changing laws could really help people.

FAMILY:

Barack Obama is married to Michelle Robinson Obama. She is a lawyer from Chicago.

They worked for a Chicago law company.

Since 2002, Michelle held important jobs at the University og Chicago Hospitals.

The Obamas have two daughters.

POLITICAL LIFE:

In 1996, Barack was elected to the Illinois State Senate where he served for six years.

In 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Four years later, he became the first African American in U.S. history to be the presidential candidate of a major political party.

Barack Obama told:

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we´ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

POLITICAL VIEWS:

-On Education:

Obama believes that preschool and summer programs help children. He thinks students should learn more math and science.

-On Health Care:

He wants the government to create a new health plan that everyone can afford.

-On the War in Iraq:

Obama has always been against the war in Iraq. He doesn´t believe that the war is making the United States or the world any safer. He wants to bring in the United Nations to help Iraq with its problems.

Obama also believes that U.S. soldiers should be working more on stopping the terrorists who caused the 9/11 attacks.

José Miguel Monzón, also known as ‘El Gran Wyoming’, ‘Big Wyoming’ is an actor, director and a very popular Spanish humorist. He was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1955.

He has been showman of several programmes, such as “Silencio se juega” (1984), “La noche se mueve” (1992) and “El peor programa de la semana” (1993). Televisión Española (Spanisn National Television) refused to broadcast this last episode because of an interview with the writer Quim Monzó, in which a joke was made about the laboral activity of Elena de Borbón, the King’s daughter. The official reason given was the low ratings of the program.

In 1995 Wyoming returned to TV, but this time he appeared on private Channel Telecinco.The name of the program was “Caiga quien caiga”. He was firstly critical about Felipe Gonzalez’s government and later the government of that time, the Partido Popular, the right party.

In 2004 he obteined another programme in the National Spanish Televisión: “La Azotea de Wyoming”. It was not completely susccessful.

Now he is doing “El Intermedio” on “La Sexta” Channel.