Joana Raspall i Juanola (Barcelona, July 1, 1913-Sant Feliu de Llobregat, December 4, 2013) was a Catalan writer, lexicographer and librarian.
Although she was known for her children's poetry, she also wrote for adults and her work includes theater, short stories and novels.
Raspall received the Gold Medal of the City of Sant Feliu de Llobregat in 1993, the Creu de Sant Jordi in 2006 and the Medal for Work President Macià in 2010. In 2013, Sant Feliu de Llobregat and the Generalitat de Catalunya declared the Year of Joana Raspall, and they celebrated their centenary in life.
Joana Raspall was born in Barcelona in the Barceloneta district, despite the fact that the family lived in El Masnou, her father was a small local agricultural exporter and her mother was in charge of keeping the accounts of the family business. Soon, at the age of three, they moved to Sant Feliu de Llobregat. She studied for a few years at the municipal school of Sant Feliu, as at eleven she went to study in Perpinyà. She only studied there for a year and a half until the death of her father caused her to return to Sant Feliu de Llobregat.
In the midst of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, at the age of fourteen, she began her cultural activism, always in Catalan. She participated in local magazines periodically since the 1920s and was writing poems, prose and theater, which she kept in a drawer, this material was not published until she was older.
More information: Escriptors
She also collaborated with local magazines such as El Eco de Llobregat, Camí and Claror, and participated in the theater and declamation group Miguel Rojas. In the 1930s, she led a campaign to request a Children's Library in Sant Feliu, according to a note preserved in the Municipal Fund of the Sant Feliu de Llobregat City Council of the Baix Llobregat Regional Archive.
Between 1935 and 1938 she studied at the School of Librarians of Barcelona,where she obtained a degree in Library Science. From then until the end of the Spanish Civil War she worked as a librarian in Vilafranca, where she helped save many examples of Catalan books of destruction with Leon Rose. At school, she also met the librarian Maria Magdalena Bonamich Font.
During Franco's dictatorship, in the years when teaching Catalan was forbidden, she did so clandestinely by teaching at her private home. She continued to write and publish where she could, encouraging everyone to love and use the Catalan language, which she continued to do years later with the advice of Òmnium Cultural.
In 1941, she married Dr. Antoni Cauhé, a doctor and head of Health in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, with whom she had three daughters and a son.
In 1963, she won the Joan Santamaria Prize, for theater for adults, with L'ermita de Sant Miquel, a play written entirely in verse, which is her first published book.
During the 1970s she was known in independent theater for her children's plays: El pou, a play that won the 1969 Cavall Fort Award, followed by two more plays making a trilogy, L'invent i Consum.
She
was making synonym cards, which she kept in shoe boxes and which would
be the origin of her work as a lexicographer. This work dedicated to the
lexicon culminated with the publication of three dictionaries, works in
which her mastery of the language is well reflected by the dictionary
of phrases made. She received the IEC Marià Aguiló Prize in 1984.
From the 1980s she began to publish poetry and narrative for children and young people and until the 1990s she did not republish anything for adults. She regularly collaborated in local magazines and was the promoter of the Martí Dot Prize for poetry for young people in Sant Feliu de Llobregat and the literary gathering of the same name.
As a writer, she was a pioneer in Catalonia of poetry for children and young people. She cultivated this genre with the desire to bring children and young people closer to poetry and make them love it. She defended poetry as an effective vehicle in the education of feelings, thus advancing new trends in emotional education.
Raspall stated that she wrote poetry for the sole desire to approach, to make thorough understanding and to love the little things around us and to find meaning in the things we have always looked at only from afar. Her children's poetry is characterized by a great capacity for observation, an exquisite and transparent balance, both in the use of language and in a delicate sensitivity that she entrusts to the reader. She visited many schools and many others visited her and brought her works inspired by her work.
Her first book of children's poetry, Petits poemes para nois i noies (1981), received the Serra d'Or Critics' Prize, a special mention for poetry in the same year, and appeared when she was 68 years old. Ten years later, her poetic publications intensified, she also wrote short stories and the volume of poetry for young people: Llum i gira-sols (1994). More than 100 poems have been set to music.
Adult poetry is what she felt most intimate, most of her own. The work, which she considered the summary of her poetic life, was Jardí vivent (2010). She has also published a novel: Diamants i culs de got (2006), based on wartime experiences. The volume Batec de poesia, collects all her lyrical production.
Raspall took an active part in the First Congress of Catalan Culture with the paper El llibre de teatre infantil and promoted, together with other theater lovers, the creation of a collection of children's theater in Catalan at the Edebé publishing house. She was an honorary member of the Catalan Language Writers Association.
Already in the time of the Civil War she saved a truck full of books from the collection of the Library of Vilafranca del Penedès and the originals of the Calaix de sastre (18th century), owned by the wealthy family to which the Palau Falguera belonged, emblematic building of Sant Feliu de Llobregat. She never left the literary task of writing and publishing works in Jocs Florals, literary contests and popular festivals.
During the Franco period she took advantage of all the opportunities to write in Catalan in the local weekly Alba, as well as actively participating in the Pro Altar campaign of the Virgin of Montserrat that was to be built in the then parish, now a cathedral, from Sant Llorenç, writing radio scripts on Montserrat songs. She also wrote plays performed by local groups at the Parish Center of Sant Feliu de Llobregat and gave private lessons in semi-clandestine Catalan to whomever she wanted and readings of poems in literary meetings.
In 1974, she promoted the creation of the Martí Dot Prize for poetry; in 1976 she chaired the Can Nadal Neighbours Association and in 1977 she was president of the Parish Center.
In 1990, she started the Literary Meeting in Sant Feliu de Llobregat, and never stopped participating in literary events, visits to schools, talks. Thus, in addition to the institutional tributes, in 2004 the Association of the Casal de la Dona of Sant Feliu de Llobregat approved the creation of the Short Story Contest for women Joana Raspall.
More information: Catorze (Catalan Version)
La feina em cau del cor
-esquinç dolorosíssim-,
i es posa en altres mans.
L'amor les acompanyi!
It's time to fold.
Work falls on my heart
-very painful tear-,
and is placed in other hands.
Love accompanies them!
Joana Raspall
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