Tomás Alcoverro, the doyen of Near East foreign correspondents, has been La Vanguardia’s foreign correspondent in Beirut for almost forty years. He has also been a contributor to other newspapers (ABC, El País), magazines (Destino, Cuadernos para el diálogo), as well as to radio and TV shows. In addition, he has been a lecturer on international public law at the University of Barcelona. He has published over seven thousand articles and has collected some of his writings in the books El decano (The doyen, Planeta) and Espejismos de Oriente (Mirages of the East, Destino), and is the author of poetry and short stories. As an eyewitness, he has covered wars, revolutions and the most significant events that have taken place in the Near East since 1970. His work has earned him the Encomienda de Isabel la Católica and the Creu de Santi Jordi, and his journalism has received the following prizes: Godó, Cirilo Rodríguez, Vázquez Montalbán, and Ortega y Gasset —this last one shared with the Spanish journalists who reported from Iraq during the 2003 American and allied invasion. Born in Barcelona in 1940, where he studied law and journalism, Alcoverro now lives in Beirut.