Josep Pla and Josep Maria de Sagarra — Catalan Literary Lives

Josep Pla — Life and Work

Josep Pla: Solo in various European cities, covering the major political events of that time and stage in his works. After the outbreak of war, he fled to Italy in 1939 and settled there. He dedicated himself to writing, notably The Gray Notebook.

In the immediate post‑war years he wrote in Spanish and collaborated with the magazine Destino. Since 1945 he published in Catalan and thus began a fully productive career. His works were collected and published in 1966 under the title Complete Works.

Pla was not a faithful follower of Noucentisme. He did not identify with Catalan modernism and had nothing to do with the avant‑garde. Pla felt close to authors interested in the literary representation of the real world: he accepted literature as part of reality. All his writings arise from life experience and respond to the desire to describe his era and the society of that part.

His description of reality is not cold or purely objective; Pla selects the experienced reality that interests him to highlight. This realistic approach reflects his curiosity about actual events and the need to tell them. This priority can also be related to his work as a journalist. The main objective is to achieve understanding in readers, so his prose is clear and entertaining. He uses common words and short sentences familiar to readers. Notable traits include dominant adjectival description, endless memories, an obsession with time, and the recovery of memory.

Major forms and representative works

• Diary and Memoirs: The Gray Notebook, Girona, etc.
• Biographies and Portraits: Homenots, Biografies, etc.
• Letters: Letters from Italy, In Catalonia, etc.
• Travel Narratives: The Narrow Street, Bitter Life, etc.
• Essays and Tests: collections such as Peasants, Years, and related pieces.

In all his work, the description of the world combines with autobiography: lived experience shapes narrative voice and selection.

Josep Maria de Sagarra — Life and Work

Josep Maria de Sagarra: celebrated for his gift of literary language, Sagarra drew influence from popular poetic traditions and from figures such as Verdaguer and Maragall, while often critiquing bourgeois values.

Some of his stories and narrative work include novels such as Pauline Buxareu, Garlic and Salt, and Private Life. Private Life is notable as a chronicle of the decline of Barcelona's aristocracy during the transition from the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera to the Republic. Sagarra records the change in values and describes society with a nostalgic and elegiac tone, noting the disappearance of an older identity.

In 1954 his reports were published, collecting the writer's experiences up to 1918 and offering a valuable portrait of the literary and social life of that era.