Vázquez-Figueroa was born in 1936 and sent aged 13 to the Sahara, where he spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Life in the desert, its inhabitants and its harshness, marked him in every sense. After several ears as a roving correspondent, he began work as a special envoy for La Vanguardia and Televisión Española, covering the most significant conflicts of the period. Little by little he managed to combine his great passions and turn them into a way of life: literature, adventure, and travelling. His earliest books were about distant places, exotic in some way. He had success with 'Ébano' and, above all, with 'Tuareg'. Many of his novels have been adapted for the cinema, an industry with which he has had a long relationship, having been a director, scriptwriter and producer. In 2010 he won the prestigious Premio Alfonso X el Sabio for his novel 'Garoé'.