Gabriel Angel Soto, Spanish

Universidad Central de Barcelona
University of California, Santa Barbara 

Gabriel Angel Soto is from Barcelona, Spain. He graduated in Law from Universidad Central de Barcelona and after military service he became a legal adviser for a private firm. After two years he decided to switch to the public sector, and he became the head of the department of Social Services of the city of Rubí, a mid-size city near Barcelona. In 1988 he took a leave of absence to pursue a graduate degree in Hispanic Literatures at UCSB. After returning briefly to his old job in Rubí, he went back to UCSB to work on his doctorate. He was selected by the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation to work on a set of late XVIII and early XIX century documents related to  the Presidio of Santa Barbara. The resulting book “Documenting Everyday Life in Early Spanish California” was published in 1998. He came to York in 1995 to teach Spanish. He also has coached soccer, and he is an adviser for Mock Trial, Model U.N and Amnesty International the Wilderness clubs. He is an active member and past president of FLAMCO, the Foreign Language Association of Monterey County. His knees having outgrown soccer and rugby, he spends his free time enjoying outdoors sports and volunteering as an instructor for the California Department of Fish and Game.