�lvaro Pombo Garc�a de los R�os is a Spanish poet, novelist and activist. Born in Santander, Cantabria, he studied at the Complutense University of Madrid and received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he lived between 1966 and 1977. His first book of poetry, Protocolos, was published in 1973, and four years later he won the El Bardo prize for his 1977 Variaciones. Returning to Spain that year, he published a collection of short stories, Relatos sobre la falta de sustancia, many of which contained homosexual characters and themes. 

June 23rd, 1939 in Santander (Age 85) as Álvaro Pombo García de los Ríos