By Marson John Mesa Bautista
In 2010 we celebrated the 150th anniversary of Maragall’s birth and to honour the occasion the Barcelona City Council placed a statue of Joan Maragall in Plaça Molina. The sculpture was created by his son Ernest Maragall i Noble.
He was born on October 10th 1860, in Barcelona. He was a Catalan poet, journalist and translator, and a very important member of the Modernista movement in literature.
When he was 14 years old, his father wanted him to work in the family textile business but in 1879 he enrolled in the University’s law faculty, where he graduated in 1884. He also learned several languages (English, German, French and Italian) and studied the piano.
In 1891 he married Clara Noble. He had 13 children with her and passed his interest in culture on to them. In 1891 he started to write for “L'Avenç”, where he published some poems. He wrote in a simple and spontaneous way and this led him to create the theory of the “living word”. Although he is well known for his poetic work, he also wrote more than 450 texts in prose. He contributed to various magazines and newspapers (L’Avenç, Catalonia i Luz, Diario de Barcelona and La Veu de Catalunya), in which he published articles in both Spanish and Catalan about literature, politics and social issues.
He won many competitions and awards during his life, as well as many honours, particularly his appointment as “Mestre en Gai Saber” and his election as president of the Barcelona Athenaeum in 1903. He was also a founding member of the philological section of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
He fell ill in November 1911 and he died on 20th December in Barcelona.
His most important works are Poesies (1895), Visions i CantsLes Disperses (1904), Enllà (1906), Seqüències (1900), (1911).
