He has lived in China for nearly a decade, where he currently serves as Asia correspondent for the newspaper ABC. He also reports for Telecinco and Cadena SER, and previously worked for El País. During this time, he has covered major historical events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, and the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party.

In January 2020, he was one of the few journalists who remained in Wuhan after the Chinese government declared the city’s lockdown. From the ground, he reported on the spread of the coronavirus, the collapse of hospitals, the population’s response, and the subsequent repatriation of Spanish citizens trapped there. This experience is chronicled in his second book, Los primeros días (Altamarea).

In 2021, he received the APM Award for Young Journalist of the Year 2020. The jury highlighted that Santirso “embodies the courage of journalists who, in a country as challenging for the press as China, did not hesitate to travel to Wuhan to witness the outbreak of the health crisis and provide multimedia coverage —text reports, videos, and photographs— of the city’s lockdown during the first days of the pandemic.”

His first book, Encuentro (Trea, 2018), is a poetry collection built through a combination of verse and prose. He has participated in literary events such as the II EU-China International Literary Festival —where he was selected as the Spanish representative—, the Havana International Poetry Festival (2021), The Bookworm Literary Festival (2019), and the XXXI Semana Negra.

He holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Navarra and a Master’s in International Relations from Tsinghua University.