José Álvarez Díaz

José Álvarez Díaz (Madrid, 1979), who signs his literary work under his “Alvaria” pen name, is a Spanish journalist and author, a former China correspondent for the EFE News Agency (the world's 4th biggest and the main Spanish-speaking media worldwide) and a university postgraduate as Specialist in International Information and the Global South.

He speaks seven languages and can work with total fluency in at least three of them (Spanish, French and English, although he also speaks some Chinese and gets along pretty comfortably in Romanian, Portuguese and Galician).

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· As a journalist, he was the first Spanish correspondent ever to open and head a permanent news agency office in Shanghai (China), which he did for 12 years. From there, he was responsible for covering all the newsbeat from the Yangtze River Delta (Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, the country's main, Eastern regions conforming its main economic, commercial hub and human development engine), producing thousands of news stories, chronicles, reports, photos, radio and TV news pieces for the twenty-some Spanish-speaking countries served daily by the different EFE newswires and services.

Today he is a regular contributor to Equal Times and other international media (Asharq News, Inteligencia Geopolítica…).

He is also the producer and host of a Classical Music podcast, Os Encontros Filharmónicos (The Philharmonic Encounters), in Spanish and Galician, with monthly interviews and musical analysis following the SFF season.

He is a holder of the collective Casa Asia Award, given in 2009 to the EFE Asia-Pacific correspondents.

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· As an author, he had chosen, until recently, to be just a “drawer writer” for a while, as the Chinese poet and editor Tang Xiaodu once called him. He cultivates poetry, fiction and non-fiction.

He has written two novels so far – the still not presented for publication País sin nombre (No Name Country) and La cajita de nácar (The Little Mother of Pearl Box), both in Spanish.

In Galician, he also wrote the poetic and musical part of a collaborative and illustrated book about Ortigueira (Spain), A lenda de Centeás (The Legend of Centeás), pending for publication (with Agoeiro editing house, based in Vigo).

As a poet he was also included, at the editors' request, in the anthology Sextinas. Pasado y presente de una forma poética (Sextines: Past and Present of a Poetic Form), compiled by Jesús Muñárriz, Chús Arellando and Sofía Rhei (Hiperión, Madrid, 2011).

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____[https://www.equaltimes.org/jose-alvarez-diaz]____