About me
Abre
comillas
Hello, I am Víctor Canalejas (Madrid, 1979), and this website is the showcase of my services company Abre comillas, focused on professional Spanish proofreading and linguistic advice as well. In this section you can learn about important aspects about me, details that will be reflected in a nice job if you decide to hire my services.
From recent times, I live in a small, quiet Swiss village, very convenient for working as a professional proofreader and achieving high quality results. For this reason, Abre comillas is registered as a sole proprietorship in Switzerland (UID: CHE-459.774.968) and the pricing list contains prices to which no taxes will be added because they do not apply.
The name and the logo are of my own creation and combine two orthographic characteristics of the Spanish language: the latin or angle quotation marks, which are recommended for printed texts, and the mandatory opening exclamation mark.
I have specialized academic education in professional Spanish proofreading, both in style and in spelling. As a highlight, I coursed the Diploma de Posgrado en Corrección y Asesoramiento Lingüístico en Español de la Universidad Rovira i Virgili. I have also participated in the mentoring program of UniCo (Unión de Correctores, the Spanish professional association in this field, of which I am a member), and my training and practice are constant.
I have experience with all kinds of clients: authors who wish to proofread their literary creations, companies that take care of their e-learning courses so that students receive quality content, international organisations that know the importance of ensuring that the materials they publish are spotless, etc.
And I know what writing, creating stories, producing scientific content, generating text for business reports... means. That is, I know quite well how much effort or enthusiasm is behind each job that requires correction for whatever reason. In addition, due to my background in science and sports, I have great attention to detail and I can say I am methodical, disciplined and meticulous. As a result of all this, you can be sure that I will correct your work with great care with a clear objective: to enhance the quality of your text as much as possible.
Science has always been a pillar in my life, in fact, it has occupied about twenty years of my academic and professional career. This period in the scientific research world can be summarized as follows:
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Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry (2006) and Master's Degree in Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology (2009). I studied both at public Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.
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Predoctoral researcher (2008-2011) in the Photonic Crystals Group of the Materials Science Institute of Madrid, belonging to the Spanish National Research Council (ICMM-CSIC).
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PhD with a cum laude distinction (2011-2016) focused on the development of nanostructured optical sensors and biosensors, at the Institute for Optoelectronic Systems and Microtechnology (ISOM-ETSIT) of the public Technical University of Madrid.
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Postdoctoral researcher (2017-2019) in the Optics, Photonics and Biophotonics Group of the Center for Biomedical Technology, public Technical University of Madrid (CTB-UPM).
You can check my researcher profile and my scientific publications by clicking on the following links of Google Scholar, Research Gate or Web of Science.
Also, writing stories has been a part of my life for more than a decade. I have never been able to dedicate much time to writing, although the year 2020 offered me more free time for the reason that we all know. That year I published a couple of works, it allowed me to advance in others and I won several prizes in science fiction short stories constests. Finally, those experiences led to an exciting career turn that crystallized in Abre comillas. These are some of my works:
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Una historia epiquísima (pero real, ¿eh?), Libros.com (2020). Available here and at major book distributors.
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Coronacuentos. 40 microcuentos que animaron el día a día durante la cuarentena de 2020, Lektu (2020). Available here.
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Winner of the III Science Fiction Short Story Contest, ZonaEreader (2020). The winning story Marineros sin mar is part of a solidarity anthology available on Amazon.
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Winner of the Science Fiction Short Story Contest "Yo, Asimov," with the story Café. Con un terrón de azúcar, Catalan Association of Scientific Communication (2020). Available here.
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3rd prize in the 2030 Science Fiction Short Story Contest: A horizon in space, with the story Pizza cuántica a domicilio, Orbitando Association, public University of Granada (2020).
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Publication of two stories in the solidarity anthology of the II Short Horror Stories Contest, ZonaEreader (2021), available here.
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Winner of the IV Science Fiction Short Story Contest, ZonaEreader (2020). The winning story Punto de inflexión digital is part of a solidarity anthology available soon on Amazon.
Apart from working and writing, another important facet in my life is sports, specifically archery, a world in which I have lived for more than half my life. Thanks to this extraordinary sport, I have forged capacities and aptitudes that are reflected in other areas of my existence, and professional Spanish proofreading is no exception. Below I summarize my trajectory among bows and arrows.
Archery athlete since 1999. Since then, and always in compound bow division, I have achieved several national records and won several national championships in Spain and Switzerland. Also, I have competed internationally sixteen times with the Spanish team (2008-2019) and four times with the Swiss team (2021-2024). I have also been a high-level athlete in Spain in the 2009-2014 and 2016-2021 periods, and I reached the 31st position in the world ranking in 2008. In addition, I am archery coach since 2003 (Spanish Archery Federation title).
Today, I am proud to be an active member of the Arqueros San Jorge club (Cáceres, Spain) and the Archers de La Riviera club (Vaud, Switzerland). In the latter country I collaborate with coaches team of the Vaudoise regional youth team.