The translation awarded by the jury is the first direct version of Arabic and a complete translation to Spanish, made from the manuscripts of Calcutta and Bulaq. The work, in four volumes containing one million two hundred thousand words and more than two thousand pages, is the result of seven years of almost exclusive dedication. "From the linguistic point of view, this version masterfully combines its status as an oral language, plain and interpretative, with the cultured and sententious language, peppered with delicious flashes of humor and irony", explains the professor of the Faculty of Education and coordinator from the collection 'Arab Classics', Luis Miguel Cañada. "If the Arabian Nights are by nature a party for imagination and fantasy, this version is also a celebration of the Castilian language, thanks to its measured and rhymed verse and its elegant, diaphanous prose," he adds.

Salvador Peña (Granada, 1958) is a full professor at the University of Málaga, where he teaches Arabic and translation, and he has been a professor at the universities of Baghdad, Leeds, Granada, Tétouan and Castilla-La Mancha, among others. For almost two decades, he has been a permanent collaborator at the UCLM through his Toledo School of Translators, in which he teaches the subject of "Ethics of translation" in the "Course of Specialist in Arabic-Spanish Translation." In the field of academic research, Salvador Peña has published Materia de Trujamanes and El Lenguaje de las Monedas Almohades, in the Publications Service of the UCLM.

For the different collections of the Toledo School of Translators, the professor has translated from Arabic works of the Egyptian Musad Basta, the Lebanese Rashid Daif, the Moroccan Abdelmayid Benyellún, and the Syrians Salim Barakat and Abu-l-Alá Al-Maarri (s.X). After his version of the Arabian Nights, Salvador Peña is preparing an anthology of poems by Abu Nuwas (s.VIII) for the same translation program "Arab Classics" of the Toledo School of Translators. In this program, "the greatest names of the Arab literary heritage, from Ibn Arabi to Al-Mutanabbi, and from Al-Hallach to Al-Maarri, have come to light," says Professor Cañada, who announces the publication of Several titles that are currently being translated by Omar Jayyam, Abu Tammam, and Fares Al-Shidyaq, in addition to two unpublished essays in Spanish by the author of Calila e Dimna.

One Thousand and One Nights has been published by the publishing house Verbum (Madrid) under a collaboration agreement with the Toledo School of Translators (UCLM). The Verbum publishing house has recently been nominated for the "Turjuman Award" (Emirate of Sharjah) for publishers that publish Arabic translations. Such award-winning will be decided next November 1st on the occasion of the inauguration of the 38th edition of Sharjah International Book Fair. This version of Salvador Peña has also received the Sheikh Hammad Award for Translation of Qatar (2016) and the Translation Prize of the Spanish Society of Arab Studies (2017).

Office of Communications, UCLM. Toledo, November