Juan Gaitán presents the book *Elementales formas de silencio* at Casa de Las Tejerinas

Friday, September 18, at 6:00 p.m., with free admission

The Estepona City Council announces that Juan Gaitán, a writer and journalist from Málaga, will present his poetry collection *Elementales formas de silencio* (Mahalta Publishing) at the Casa de Las Tejerinas on Friday, September 18, at 6:00 p.m. Admission is free until capacity is reached.

Synopsis: Ernestina de Champourcín says in a little-known aphorism: “Fulfillment would be to remain silent forever.” Similarly, for the author of *Elementales formas de silencio*, the poem becomes an inquiry, an exploration, a search for silence as the perfect form of the poem.

Juan Gaitán pursues, in the manner of Juan Ramón Jiménez, the stripped-down poem, free of all superfluous elements—a poem that requires fewer and fewer ingredients to reach that state of fulfillment that would ultimately be silence.

Readers who immerse themselves in “Elemental Forms of Silence” will find very brief poems, composed with an economy of means and resources that includes dispensing with the vast majority of literary devices. A simple mode of expression that nevertheless seeks depth—a poem that provokes emotion and meditation.

Juan Gaitán was born in Málaga in 1966. He is a journalist, poet, storyteller, literary critic, and professor of creative writing.

As a journalist, he has worked for various local and national media outlets and has been awarded the José María Pemán Prize for Journalism and the Ateneo–University of Málaga Prize for Journalism, the Journalist’s Medal of Honor, awarded by the Málaga Press Association, Radio Marca’s “Escudo de Oro,” and the José Luis Tobalina Prize for Journalistic Articles. He is currently a columnist for the Prensa Ibérica group and Cadena Ser, and head of Press and Protocol for the Association of Municipalities of the Western Costa del Sol.

As a poet, he has published the plaquette *Juglaría* and the poetry collections *Caligrafía del lunes* (2017); “El orden de los días” (not for sale, 2019), “Animal azul” (2021), “Cronomaquia” (2024), and “Elementales formas de silencio” (2026). His poems have been included in various national and international poetry anthologies alongside those of authors of the stature of Nobel Prize in Literature laureates Seamus Heaney and José Saramago. He also won the 2016 “Cortijo la Duquesa” International Poetry Prize and the 21st Al-Ándalus Literary Contest in Burgos.

As a novelist, he has published the novels *Hombres de Luz* (Editorial Clave, 1996)—whose Serbo-Croatian translation won the International Novel Prize from the Jewish Community of Serbia—*El Columbario* (Málaga Digital, 1999); “Donde las nubes dan sombra” (Málaga City Council, 2007), “Wolframio” (El Toro Celeste, 2018), and “Aware” (Adeshoras, 2019). He is also the author of the short story collections “Angelic and Diabolical” (Ateneo de Málaga, 2002), “Memoirs of a Tightrope Walker” (Traspiés, 2005), and “Violet City” (Adeshoras, 2016). He won the 30th edition of the UNED Short Story Prize in 2019.

He is also the author of the travel guide *Vive y descubre Málaga* (Everest, 2000) and the tourism book *Reencontrar la Costa del Sol* (co-authored with Agustín Lomeña, Editorial Lhumberg, 2009).

Other works of his that are more difficult to categorize include “La Luna,” an essay on the presence of the moon in the history of painting, accompanied by 26 poems inspired by as many paintings (Galería Benedito, 2009); “Ojén, Origen Profundo,” a book of personal reflections on that town on the Costa del Sol, illustrated with photographs by Pedro Ruiz Troyano (Málaga Provincial Council, 2011); and four volumes of “Cuentos Instantáneos,” a project developed over four years in the village of Istán, consisting of writing down the stories told to him by the villagers, who took them away in written form “instantly,” thus playing on the concept of the haste with which they are written and on the village’s name.

On October 2, 2022, a play premiered in Medina Azahara, an archaeological site designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The play was written in collaboration with Antonio Manuel Rodríguez and has been performed about ten times in various towns throughout the province of Córdoba. The play has been published as a book by the Córdoba-based publishing house Utopía.

As a professor of Creative Writing, he has taught courses for two decades.

As a member of the Ateneo de Málaga, he has served on its Board of Directors for over a decade; he was president of the “Ateneos de Andalucía” Federation for four years and currently holds the position of first vice president.