2023-07-20 15:51:28
Jose Soto Chica (Granada, 1971) was assigned to the UN Peacekeeping Mission in the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. There he experienced the horrors of a conflict that marked him forever. Death, cruelty… And the nightmare continued when he returned to Spain. During some practices with the Army bomb squad, an explosion at the base of Cerro Muriano left him in “very serious condition.” After fourteen days in a coma, and after being about to be unplugged by doctors, he woke up blind and without a leg. At present, however, he has become one of the reference medievalists in our country based on effort and self-improvement.
Soto Chica has more achievements than the minutes we have to narrate them. He has become a professor at the University of Granada despite the fact that, as he himself explains, the institutions feel a certain reluctance towards teachers with disabilities. He is also a researcher at the Center for Byzantine, Neo-Greek and Cypriot Studies in the same city. His literary and essay work is extensive. He has written reference books, several of them focused on the Visigothic and Roman world. And he has been recognized as the best Spanish author of 2022 at the HisLibris awards for his novel ‘Bajo el fuego y la sal’. Although his resume hides many other awards.
In the end, it has become what it was intended to be: a blessing to the world of medieval history in Spain and to those around it. And all this, after overcoming an experience in the Yugoslav wars that would have traumatized anyone else. “I live imagining and I project into the text my desire to see the battles, the landscapes, to turn the words into something more, to give them a third dimension”, he explains.
In this ‘We are in History’ podcast we have him with us.
Credits
Script and production: Manuel P. Villatoro and Manuel Garre.
Editing: Manuel Garre.
Announcement: Manuel Garre and Manuel P. Villatoro.
Collaboration: José Soto Chica
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