director / editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia
PABLO GÓMEZ began his passion for communication at a very young age, contributing since he was a teenager with written articles to all kinds of publications, covering a wide range of topics from current political and social issues to the emerging environmental problems. His passion for writing was also transferred to the literary field, participating in several literary competitions with short stories (mainly fiction), which have always been one of his great hobbies.
His interest in languages also began at a very early age, learning English as a foreign language from childhood, in which he soon excelled; but he also began to study other languages such as Russian and Arabic during teenage, due to his growing personal and intellectual interest in the regions of Eurasia and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, after completing his high school studies, he began to study Social Work at university, a career that he soon abandoned to begin studying Political and Social Sciences at university. In any case, and in a self-taught way, he has never stopped studying another of his great passions: History.
In 1995, and for more than 6 years, he began to collaborate with a local radio station in his hometown of Gijón, first just as a contributor with a small space on environment within other programmes, but soon with his own radio programmes, in which he also tackled criticism of the political and social reality, or spoke about the international geopolitical situation. It was at this time that he travelled to Africa to visit the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, in the Algerian Sahara desert: an experience that completely changed his perspective on life and the world.
With the experience gained during his years on the radio, and taking advantage of his environmental training, he then began a 4-year collaboration with Greenpeace Spain to give talks and conferences on environmental education. It was while he was working as an environment teacher for a local city council project that, during a meeting organised with young people from various countries in Ireland (a country where he had previously been living), he came into contact with a group of young Turks and met the woman who was to become his future wife.
From then on, Pablo quickly became interested in the culture, history and current affairs of Turkey: this interest soon led to the creation of the Spanish blog ‘Turkey: the gate between East and West’, which quickly grew in popularity on the Internet and became a reference in Spanish for learning more about Turkey. As a result of this success, in 2007 a Turkish diplomat, Akın Özçer, contacted him and proposed him to collaborate in the new news portal hispanatolia.com, which had just been launched with the support of the Turkish embassy in Spain.
Pablo Gómez accepted the proposal and, while he began to learn Turkish, he started writing for Hispanatolia: at first as just another contributor, but very soon he became the director of the Spanish section of the website – which at that time was published in Spanish and Turkish – until finally in 2011 he took over the management of the whole website, which he modernised with a new design and new topics, significantly broadening its scope of readers and consolidating it as a totally independent media outlet. In 2023, the idea of creating a new edition in English with the same objectives and philosophy that Hispanatolia finally becomes a reality, with the aim of bringing Turkey, its hot news and its reality, closer to the English-speaking public, overcoming barriers (language, geographical, cultural, etc.) and existing prejudices.
At the same time – since he has always been an autodidact with a restless mind – both from his beginnings with the blog and later working at Hispanatolia, Pablo Gómez began to study in depth the culture, language, history and current affairs of Turkey. As part of this interest in Turkey, and due to his close emotional and family ties with the country, Pablo Gómez spent during years long periods of several months living in his home in Turkey, knowing first-hand the reality and current affairs of the country and travelling extensively through its main regions and cities: Marmara region (Istanbul, Bursa, Yalova, Çanakkale), Turkish Thrace (Tekirdaĝ), the Aegean (Izmir, Balıkesir, Aydin, Denizli), Central Anatolia (Eskişehir, Ankara, Konya), Cappadocia (Nevşehir, Kayseri), south-east Anatolia (Urfa, Gaziantep, Mardin, Diyarbakır, Batman, Adıyaman), the Mediterranean (Adana, Antakya), the Black Sea (Trabzon, Rize, Artvin)…
Moreover, as a result of his work on Turkey in Hispanatolia, over the years he has collaborated and/or conducted interviews with all kinds of media outlets: Cadena SER, A3, Huffington Post, El País, Russia Today, TRT…
During the last few years, while continuing to expand his knowledge of Turkey and its region, Pablo Gómez has also continued his training in other fields necessary to run a news portal on the Internet: web design, content writing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), business management, image and video editing, community manager, generative AI, marketing… etc, etc.
Some of the courses he has taken during the last years include:
- Career Essentials in Generative AI by Microsoft and LinkedIn
- Copywriting powered by Generative AI
- Fundamentals of Generative Artificial Intelligence
- Artificial Intelligence Beyond Engineering
- Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
- Communicating with Confidence
- Business English
- Content Marketing
- Tips and tricks to write better in Spanish
- Expression and Communication Techniques
- Greenpeace Spain Educators Meeting
- Certificate in Work Experience (University of Cambridge)
- Russian language course for beginners
- Introduction to Arabic
- Turkish language course for beginners
- Social and Telematic Networks
- Conflict Mediation (MPDL)
- Course on Entrepreneurship
- Gender Equality
- Advanced computer course
- Radio broadcaster course
- Web design and multimedia
- Basic business training for entrepreneurs
More courses and certifications: linkedin.com/in/pablogomezsolis/details/certifications