Our team
Nicolas Cahen
Of Belgian and French origin, he grew up in Brussels and has lived in Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Since 2017 he has lived in Spain.
In the field of astronomy:
Passionate about astronomy and with a creative mind, he designs solutions aiming at the development of scientific culture in Spain. Among others, he devised and coordinated the development of the solar system at the scale of the region of Ciudad Rodrigo through the astronomical association Astróbriga, of which he was a founding member and president.
He is a member of the board of directors of the Federation of Astronomical Associations of Spain (FAAE). He is also a member of the Asociación Para la Enseñanza de la Astronomía, the Organización Salmantina de la Astronáutica y el Espacio (OSAE), the Asociación Astronómica Placentina Mintaka, the Red Astronavarra Sarea and the Sociedad Astronómica Dominicana.
He is a member of the board of directors of the Federación de Asociaciones Astronómicas de España (FAAE). He is also a member of the Asociación Para la Enseñanza de la Astronomía , the Organización Salmantina de la Astronáutica y el Espacio (OSAE), the Asociación Astronómica Placentina Mintaka, the Red Astronavarra Sarea, as well as the Sociedad Astronómica Dominicana.
He is an astronomical divulger of the FAAE, and Starlight astronomical monitor, and completed the "Exploring Time and Space" training at the University of Arizona.
And also:
He has a multidisciplinary background in the social sciences, covering, on the one hand, political science and international relations, with a specialty in Ibero-American studies and on the other hand, pedagogical innovation and the application of new technologies in education. He focuses his interests on new learning methodologies and the development of scientific culture.
In 2010 he created Kiunzi with his wife Cristina: a small company with which they carried out different projects in the fields of education, environment, and social communication in Latin America. He has coordinated projects of national scope around new technologies applied to education.
Cristina Iglesias
Spanish by birth and Dominican by adoption, she has lived in different Latin American and European countries. In 2017 she returned to Ciudad Rodrigo, the place where she grew up, and today she lives straddling the city of Salamanca and the Sierra de Gata.
Her intellectual curiosity has led her to develop studies in different fields. She is a journalist, and anthropologist and has a master's degree in intercultural education. She is currently developing her doctoral thesis on school failure and school dropout from an ethnographic perspective: giving voice to the people who suffer these processes of school disengagement.
Her work experience, developed mainly in Latin America, has been oriented towards social pedagogy and popular education. Over the years she has specialized in the organization of workshops and the preparation of pedagogical materials, as well as in the development of social research: systematizations, evaluations, community diagnostics, and baselines studies of social projects.
His passion for astronomy is linked to anthropology and understanding what is universal in the diversity of cultures found throughout the length and breadth of our planet. In that sense, the connection that humans have established with the heavens in all cultures is a narrative thread that attracts her enormously.
Along with Nicolás, she was part of the team promoting the solar system project at the scale of the region of Ciudad Rodrigo and on of the board of directors of Astróbriga.
She is currently a member of several groups of belonging to the Federation of Astronomical Associations of Spain (FAAE): AstrónomAs, which seeks to strengthen the role of women in amateur astronomy in Spain, and Astronomía Popular, which investigates popular cultural traditions related to astronomy.
She is also an astronomical disseminator for the FAAE.
We are in Villamiel
Canopea is located in the municipality of Villamiel, west of Sierra de Gata.
The village is about 750 metres above sea level, in the midst of forests, vineyards, olive groves, and green meadows where sheep, cows, goats, and pigs graze. It is the highest village in the region.
The lush orchards that cross it, its mansions, and chapels invite visitors to stop along the way, before continuing to Trevejo, a small medieval hamlet located at the foot of the castle of the same name. This jewel of Sierra de Gata is listed as an Asset of Cultural Interest and from the hill on which it is located the views of the valley are incredible.