The English page contains only this brief text about the author and his work. For further information, please visit the Greek or Spanish version of this site. |
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Pedro Olalla (Oviedo, Spain, 1966) is a writer, Hellenist, professor, translator and filmmaker, in which capacities he collaborates regularly with publishers and educational and cultural institutions from different countries around the world. For more than thirty-five years, he has maintained an intense relationship with Greece, where he engaged in Hellenism and where he settled in 1994. His literary and audiovisual works explore and promote Greek and humanistic culture by combining literary, plastic and scientific elements through a markedly personal language. In the social sphere, the author actively defends through his writings, initiatives, conferences and public interventions, a greater participation of the citizen in political decision-making and in the definition of the common interest.His main occupation is creative writing: he has published more than 30 original works of literary and cultural content in different languages, as well as a long series of journalistic articles and translations of Greek and Spanish authors, specializing in literature, archeology, history and the humanities overall. Parallel to the writing, he developed his teaching work for twenty three years as a professor of translation, of Spanish as a foreign language, and of Greek language and civilization, in institutions such as the Cervantes Institute of Athens, the Greek Parliament, the University of Athens (“Master of Translation and Traductology”), the National School of Public Administrations of Greece and the National Research Foundation of Greece. In the journalistic field, he was director of the Cultural Bulletin of the Spanish Embassy in Greece and editor-in-chief of the monthly bilingual magazine "El Sol de Atenas", and during the last fifteen years he regularly publishes opinion articles on the political and social situation of Greece. As an audiovisual creator, he has made documentary films, editorial publications and more than forty individual photographic exhibitions; as a lexicographer, he is co-author of the "New Greek Dictionary" (ed. Texto), for which he worked for years, having earned a grant by the A.G. Leventi Foundation; as a researcher, he has been fellow of A. S. Onassis, A. G. Leventis, K. & E. Ouranis and Open Society Foundation, and he has collaborated as well with specialized publishers such as National Geographic, Thames & Hudson, Altaïr, Planeta, Road Editions, etc, as well as with different producers and television networks.
His works include the Mythological Atlas of Greece –a project sponsored by the Onassis Foundation and which was awarded a prize by the Academy of Athens, in the preparation of which he covered more than one hundred thousand kilometres in Greece, following the traces of the ancient myths–, the series of television documentaries Places of Myths –produced by Greek Radio and Television (ET1) for the Special Programme of the Olympic Games Athens 2004–, the documentary Nymphaeum of Mieza: The Garden of Aristotle –a visit to the place where the philosopher taught the young Alexander the Great–, the book Blissful Arcadia –a great imaginary journey into Western Civilization, in pursuit of the Arcadian element–, the trilogy integrated by the Minor History of Greece - a historical and literary view on the formation and survival of the humanist attitude - , Greece in the air - inheritances and challenges of the ancient Athenian democracy seen from today's Athens - and De senectute politica: letter without response to Cicero, the book Words from the Aegean: the sea, the Greek language and the dawn of civilization, as well as the films In Company with Calliyannis - nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" award from the Greek Academy of Cinema - and Greece in the air, audiovisual version of his eponymous book, a work that has given rise to a Open project on the ethics of democracy in which more than fifty institutions from different countries have participated so far.In recognition of his work on promotion of Greek Culture, he has been appointed Ambassador of Hellenism by the Greek State, Knight of the Spanish Order of Civil Merit, Associate Member of the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University, Honorary Member of PEN International (Greece), Honorary Citizen of Kleitor (Arcadia), Chios and Oinousses Islands, Illustrious Visitor of the City of Montevideo, and has been invited by more than 400 cultural, educational and media institutions from Europe, America and Asia to hold conferences, public events and information programs (Universities of Athens, Aegean, Macedonia and Thrace, Autonomous University of Mexico, Royal Holloway University of London, University of Jordan, Menéndez Pelayo International University, Onassis Foundation New York, Fulbright Foundation, Instituto Cervantes, Casa Mediterráneo, TVE, RNE, Telesur, Channel 13 Argentina, etc.). As well, he was a candidate for the European Parliament for Greece (EPAM), a founder member and director of International Society for Arcadia and vice-president of the Onassis Foundation’s Scholars’ Association. |
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"Olalla has the gift of authors like Zweig, Montanelli, Graves or Norwich when combining amenity and rigor, and the virtue of awakening the curiosity of the reader, to take him to new readings, new discoveries." Libros, Carmen Pulín Ferrer |
"Pedro Olalla writes with the same solvency about classical Greece and Greece now, about the Greek foundation of almost all the best things we have and we know, and about the disaster of a Europe subordinated to the great economic powers, uninhabited citizenship, ravaged by incompetent and corrupt political classes." Antonio Muñoz Molina, El País "One of the most lucid and committed representatives of contemporary philhellenism." Ignacio F. Garmendia, Diario de Sevilla |
Pedro Olalla Acantilado |
Pedro Olalla Google Images |
Pedro Olalla LoveGreece |