José M. Siles
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
José María Siles is a Spanish journalist for the National Television of Spain, TVE, having worked as a foreign correspondent in Paris, Bonn, Rabat, Berlin, New York and Brussels.
He directed fringe theater and produced social documentaries during the last years of the Franco's dictatorship, in Spain, before studying Journalism and receiving a Masters degree in Communication Sciences from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Later he went to the university of La Sorbonne and worked in Paris for the Spanish news service of Radio France Internationale.
As a foreign correspondent for TVE in Bonn, he covered the last years of a still divided Germany under the cold war. In the night of November, 9 1989, he was one of the first foreign journalists reporting live from the Checkpoint Charlie on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
With Germany being reunified, he was sent to inaugurate a new TVE office in Rabat. Then, in 1992, Siles was a War Correspondent in Bosnia where he witnessed the dramatic siege of Sarajevo and the reunification of the city after the Dayton Agreement. He became later director of Canal Sur Televisión, the Public Broadcaster of Andalusia.
TVE New York Bureau chief since 1999, he created a new office in Washington DC before returning to Europe as Brussels Chief correspondent, informing about the arrival of the euro, the enlargement of the European Union and the new rol of NATO.
José María Siles (Almería, 1951) is member of the Team Europe: the European Commission's panel of independent conference speakers.