Ira Dei English Version

His complex, nail-biting story lines are built on his background in the Canary Islands, where he is a prizewinning History Professor, practicing lawyer and active sportsman.

Gambín has written twelve crime fiction novels and several history books on the European colonisation of the Canary Islands, winning the Special Prize of the Cabildo de Gran Canaria (2005 and 2011) and the Rumeu de Armas Prize (2011) for his efforts, along with a Special Award for his outstanding doctoral thesis.

Gambín was born in Melilla, on the north African coast, in October 1963, as his father was the medical director of a hospital in Erfoud, on the edge of the Sahara, near the Algerian border, where civilisation ends and the desert begins. At the age of three, he and his family moved to Larache, near Tangiers, and then on to Santa Cruz, Tenerife, in 1970.

As a child, he was a very successful long-distance swimmer and he went on to become a Spanish Junior champion in the Modern Pentathlon, attending the Junior World Championships in 1988, before going on to study law at the University of La Laguna.

Some years later, he returned to his studies, History this time, graduating in 1998 before delving into an extensive period of historical research where he carved out a niche as a specialist in the 16th-century history of the Canary Islands, culminating in his prizewinning doctorate in 2011.

Gambín continues to indulge his love of sport alongside his successful career as a lawyer.