Xavier Romero Frías

As an artist he has illustrated books for the EDC (Educational Development Center) of the Ministry of Education in Malé, the Maldives, and painted the fish as well as the legends of the Maldives and the sailboats of previous times. There was an exhibition of some of his works in Vienna, Austria, in 1987.

According to Sri Lankan scholar Rohan Gunaratna, Romero Frías "followed the steps of British scholar HCP Bell." Dr Roland Silva, the Director of the Archaeology Department of Sri Lanka between 1983 and 1992 compared the pioneering work of Romero Frías with that of Henry Parker, a British anthropologist who compiled the folk tales of the villages of Sri Lanka around 1880. Romero Frías gave lectures at the University of Madras in the 1980s invited by Professor V. Sudarsan, head of the Department of Anthropology. During the past thirty years, he has written many articles and commentaries, as well as given lectures on Maldivian traditional Islam, religious syncretism and the causes of Islamic terrorism.

Xavier Romero Frías investigated the folklore and oral tradition of the Maldives beginning in 1979. In order to achieve his goal he learned two dialects of the Maldivian language fluently and understood well others, gaining also deep knowledge of the Maldivian writing systems and Arabic. During his years in the Maldives, Romero Frías took a special interest in compiling the traditions of the Maldives by becoming friendly with the elders of the islands he visited. Before Romero Frías did this work, very few of the Maldivian stories and legends were in written form.

Xavier Romero Frías (born 1954) is a Spanish writer and scholar. He lived among the Maldivians over a 13-year period. His present residence is in Bangkok, Thailand.