Bahia Mahmud Awah

Bahia was born into a nomadic family in 1960 near Auserd, located in the Rio de Oro southern region of, what was then, the Spanish Sahara. He was named Bahia in honour of his uncle, the Sahrawi poet Bahia Uld Awah. His mother gave him his first classes, acting as teacher until he joined the first schools made by the Spanish authorities, an experience he later portrayed in his book "La maestra que me enseñó en una tabla de madera" (The Teacher Taught Me on a Wooden Board). Bahia spent those early years between the schoolyard and the desert, shepherding the flocks belonging to his family.^[1] He obtained his bachelor's degree by studying both in Western Sahara and Algeria, because of the start of the Western Sahara War.^[2]

In the late seventies he moved to Cuba to undertake his university studies, like many Sahrawi youths at the time. Although he had always loved the arts, he graduated in telecommunications from the University of Havana. On returning to the Sahrawi refugee camps, he directed the Spanish program at the Sahrawi National Radio for four years.^[2]

In 1998 he moved to Spain, where he did linguistics and translation studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid and the University of Alcalá.^[3] In 2001 he started the blog "Poemario por un Sáhara Libre" (Poems by a Free Sahara) as a space for social, political and cultural news about the Sahrawi people.^[4] Since 2010, he has been an honorary professor of Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has held conferences about the Sahrawi literature in the universities of Spain and USA.^[1]