BBC NEWS | Americas | Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80

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</tr></table></div> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="629" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tr> <td colspan="3"> <div class="mxb"> <div class="sh"> Gabriel Garcia Marquez turns 80 </div> </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top" width="416"> <font size="2">   <table border="0" cellspacing="0" align="right" width="203" cellpadding="0"> <tr><td> <div> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41264000/jpg/_41264852_top.jpg" width="203" height="152" alt="Gabriel Garcia Marquez" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="0"> <div class="cap">Gabriel Garcia Marquez now lives in Mexico</div> </div> </td></tr> </table>   <B>Colombia is marking the 80th birthday of its most famous writer, the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.</B> <P> Aracataca, his hometown, woke up to 80 cannon salvos. Paper and metal yellow butterflies then filled public spaces. <P> Cities and towns across Colombia are holding events - but the author, who now lives in Mexico, is not expected to set foot in the country. <P> Spain has already marked the occasion with a marathon reading of the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.  <P> Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega read the opening pages of the 1967 novel by the man often credited with bringing the magic realism genre to a wider global audience. <P> Then, over some 20 hours, 80 politicians, writers and actors from the Spanish-speaking world took 15-minute turns to read from the author's best-known book. <P> <B>Nobel Prize</B> <P> "He was born in Colombia, but all of us who speak Spanish have in him a referent of perfection and the creation of beauty," Colombian Ambassador to Spain Noemi Sanin said in Madrid. <P> In Aracataca, parades, music festivals and religious ceremonies are taking place on Tuesday. <P> It has also been announced that the zinc and wood house in which "Gabo" - as he is known in Colombia - lived as a child will be restored. <P> This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude and 25 years since Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize. <P> Garcia Marquez - who has been writing for the past 60 years - is also known for other novels such as Love in the Time of Cholera and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. <P> </font> <br /><br clear="all" /> <div class="mvtb"><table cellspacing="0" width="416" border="0" cellpadding="0"><tr> <td width="213"><a class="epl" onClick="popUpPage('http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6422579.stm','status=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,width=370,height=445','Mailer')" href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/email/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6422579.stm" target="Mailer"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/email.gif" align="left" width="17" height="11" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="3"> E-mail this to a friend </a></td> <td width="203"><a class="epl" onClick="popUpPage('http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6422579.stm','status=no,scrollbars=yes,toolbar=yes,resizable=yes,menubar=yes,width=600,height=445','Printer')" href="http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6422579.stm" target="Printer"> <img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/img/v3/print.gif" align="left" width="17" height="11" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="3"> Printable version </a></td> </tr></table></div> <div class="mvtb"> </div><br /> </td> <td width="10" valign="top"><img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/shared/img/o.gif" width="10" height="1" alt="" border="0" vspace="0" hspace="0"></td> <td width="203" valign="top"> <div class="seeAlsoH"> SEE ALSO </div> <div class="arr"> <a href="/2/hi/americas/5116004.stm"> Marquez town rebuffs Macondo name </a> <br /> <span 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