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Ana Briongos & Toni Alsina - 2021
photo by Styrous®
Today, December 29, is the birthday of Ana M. Briongos who was born in in Barcelona, Spain in 1946. It was our great fortune to meet her and her husband Toni Alsina sixty years later in Barcelona, in 2006, at a party given for her in a beautiful old dance hall from the 1800's called La Paloma (link below).
The
meeting had been totally forgotten by all of us
until one fateful night four and a half years later in Berkeley, California (link below) when we had dinner at a friends house and Ana happened to be there. Toni was not but later recognized Tom and me in a photo Ana took of us during the dinner. Talk about a fantastic memory! Thanks, Toni! We've all been friends ever since.
Ana received a five-year degree in physics at the University of Barcelona. She studied Persian at the University of Tehran during the time of the Shah, and has worked in Iran and Afghanistan.
She is the author of Winter in Kandahar: Life in Afghanistan Before the Taliban, which won the 2009 Annual Latino Book Award for best travel book. And her book Black on black: Iran revisited, was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award in 2001 (link below).
Ana M. Briongos ~ Black on black: Iran revisited
Both Winter in Kandahar and Black on black are fascinating and educating reading about the culture and customs in Iran.
In 2009, she won the Gourmand Award 2009 in two categories for the book Iran, receptes i costums gastronómics, written in Catalan, with Quico Alsina as co-author.
In October, 2020 she was the presenter of the program 'Va passar aquí'
on the History and curiosities of the city of Barcelona, a television
channel Betevé on 'La casa dels hippies, un edificio singular' built in Barcelona in 1970 by the architects Lluís Clotet and Òscar Tusquets, now inhabited by artists and liberal people who made the building a symbol of Barcelona's counterculture.
Viewfinder links:
YouTube links:
Ana María Briongos -(the videos are in Spanish or Catalan)
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