Manuel Arroyo-Stephens (Bilbao, 1945 – El Escorial, 2020) studied Law and Economics, but soon turned his attention to his true passion: books. In the 1970s, he founded the Turner bookstore and publishing house in Madrid, where he sold books censored by the Franco regime and published key titles such as The Forging of a Rebel by Arturo Barea and the late work of José Bergamín. As a writer, he has published, among others, the anonymous libel Against the French (1980; reissued under his own name in 2016), the novel Por tierra (1992), the short story collection Imagen de la muerte y otros textos (2002), the memoir Pisando ceniza (Treading on Ashes) (2015), and the essay collection La muerte del espontáneo (The Death of the Spontaneous) (2019). Acantilado has published Mexicana (2021) and De donde viene el viento (From Where the Wind Comes) (2024).