Alberto Vázquez Figueroa

Alberto Vázquez-Figueroa (born 11 October 1936 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands) is a Spanish novelist, inventor and industrialist. His novels have sold over 25 million copies worldwide. He is the owner of A.V.F.S.L, a desalinization company that uses a method of desalinization by pressure, invented by himself. Vázquez-Figueroa and his family fled from the Canary Islands to Africa during the Spanish Civil War. Since his youth, he visited the Sahara and described the culture of the desert region. He also worked as a teacher of submarine and diving techniques on the school boat "Cruz del Sur" of the oceanologist Jacques Cousteau He attended the studios of the Escuela Oficial de Periodismo de Madrid in a part of 1962 and worked in the Destino specials. He was a war correspondent in La Vanguardia, for TVE (Televisión Española) and for the program A toda plana with de la Cuadra Salcedo and Silva. As a correspondent, he documented revolutionary wars in countries such as Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, and Guatemala.

He later wrote his first novel, Arena y viento (Sand and Wind), and in 1975, he published as many as 14 to 15 novellas such as Ébano. His other works include Tuareg, Ébano, and El perro as well as the sagas Cienfuegos, Bora Bora, Manaos and Piratas. His novel Tuareg was cinematized in 1984 by director Enzo G. Castellari. His novel Iguana was cinematized in 1988 by Monte Hellman. His novel Garoé (the name of a sacred tree in the Canary Islands) won the 2010 Historical Novel Prize Alfonso X El Sabio, valued at €100,000. He has also published an autobiography entitled Anaconda.He is also a screenwriter and film director and has made such films as Oro rojo.