Carlos Pinto Grote

Carlos Pinto Grote was born in La Laguna, Tenerife, in 1923. He studied at the Teacher Training School in La Laguna and medicine at the University of Cádiz, and specialised in psychiatry in Madrid. After returning to the Canary Islands he worked in medical centres in Tenerife while developing an extensive literary career.

His first poems appeared in the 1940s around the magazine Mensaje. In 1954 he published Las tardes o el deseo, the first book in a body of work that included poetry, short fiction, novels and essays. The Academia Canaria de la Lengua highlights in his poetry a search for knowledge and themes such as time, death and love.

Awarded the Canary Islands Literature Prize in 1991, Pinto Grote died on 3 June 2015. His profile combines sustained literary activity with psychiatric medical training and practice.