ACN Barcelona – The third edition of the Essay Prize Ricard Torrents Bertrana awarded this Wednesday Montserrat Bacardí for her book La veritat literària de Teresa Pàmies, the first complete biography of the Catalan writer. The winning work covers his life trajectory from childhood to the consequences of his exile, and documents the different sides of an intense and fruitful life, both in the political and literary aspects of Pàmies. As the author explains in an interview with ACN, it is an “honour” because the award allows “an academic name to be linked with a self-taught writer”. “There was no study like this and it presented the life trajectory of Pàmies and his work as a whole”, he points out.
Bacardí remembers that Pàmies was a most popular writer, who sold many books and made herself heard. Despite this, she regrets that the academic world did not take her into account much, on the one hand because of her own “insecurity”, due to the fact that she is self-taught; but also because of the “coldness” of recent years, in which he published very quickly. “Fifty books in thirty years”, specifies the author of the book, “and a lot of work, in order for it to consolidate and penetrate society, needs a period of rest”.
On the other hand, the research has allowed the prize winner to discover many things she did not know. “For example the inner life of orthodox communist militants”, he points out. A fact that was a great incentive to continue and that brought him “great fun”. As for the objective, Bacardí starts from a desire to “claim” that he “returns or continues” reading Pàmies’ work.
“There are between five and ten fundamental works, if they can be republished I will feel more than satisfied”, she insists, recalling that there is currently a notable publishing offer dedicated to recovering titles, and where Teresa Pàmies would fit in perfectly. For readers less familiar with the figure of the author, he recommends starting with ‘Testament a Praga’, her first book. “It is wonderful and of a current and resounding validity”, he concludes.
The presentation of the third edition of the Ricard Torrents Bertrana Essay Award took place at the Agustí Centelles Library in Barcelona, ??located in the Teresa Pàmies Cultural Center, with the presence of Eva Espasa, vice-rector of Research and Knowledge Transfer of the UVic-UCC, Carlota Torrents, daughter of Ricard Torrents, and Gemma Redortra, editor.
The literary truth of Teresa Pàmies reviews the life of the writer, from her childhood and youth in Balaguer, through her first contacts with Marxist ideas, the impact that the Civil War had on her and on her family and the consequences of an exile produced by his active militancy in favor of communism. Santo Domingo, Mexico, Belgrade, Prague and Paris are the destinations where Pamies lived during the thirty years of exile; thirty tortuous years, marked by dark moments that he wanted to forget and by the hope of being able to return home one day.
During the Paris stage, Pàmies began the facet of writing, a task that she would continue when she returned to Barcelona in 1971 and that she would not abandon until her death. His work is one of the most polygraph and prolific of Catalan literature of the 20th century. In total, it includes fifty books and thousands of journalistic articles, of which Testament in Prague (Josep Pla prize, 1970), When we were captains (1974), It rained all day (1974), Gent del meu exili (1975) stand out. and the columns he wrote in L’Avui since its foundation in 1976. Bacardí’s book will be presented at La Setmana del Llibre en Català on Tuesday, September 12 at 7:30 p.m. with a conversation between the author and Montserrat Barderi .
