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Biography |
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Page 1 of 5
- Primera volada (1897-1919) - "First Flight"
- Cartes de lluny (1920-1938) -
"Letters from afar"
- Aigua de mar (1939-1947) - "Sea
Water"
- Coses vistes (1948-1965) - "Things I have seen"
- Notes de capvesprol (1966-1981) -
"The 'Evening Sea Breeze' notes"
Primera volada (1897-1919) - First Flight
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Joasep Pla with his brother and sisters: Rosa, Maria, Pere and Josep. C. 1904. Fundació
Josep Pla, col. Edicions Destino. |
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Josep Pla with friends and family on Canadell beach. Calella de Palafrugell, 1915-1916. ©:
Baldomer Gili i Roig. Fundació Josep Pla. |
The Pla family was one of the wealthiest families in
Palafrugell. They decided to enrol their four children Josep, Pere, Maria and
Rosa at a primary school. From the very beginning, Josep Pla stood out because
of his passion for reading (Montaigne, Pascal, Stendhal, Baroja, Azorín, Ruyra,
Eugeni d’Ors…), for his incredible memory and for his nonconformist
character. While living in a boarding school to study Batxillerat (Secondary
education), the apprentice writer began his first narratives, as well as
contributing to different local magazines. He became enthralled by Girona where
he went to school.
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The writer Alexandre Plana with Josep Pla. C. 1919. Fundació Josep
Pla, col. Edicions Destino. |
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Living in host houses while studying at University, the
young student’s preoccupations were above all, reading and walking.
Although he never lost contact with his friends or Palafrugell and its
landscapes, for which he felt an unbounded affection, little by little, he
got used to frequenting the cultural areas of Barcelona of that time. In
the Ateneu Barcelonès, Josep Pla discovered a library rich in
French literature where he could read the best daily European newspapers
of the time. He also met a group of intellectuals who formed a peculiar
circle (Joaquim Borralleres, Joan Estelrich, Alexandre Plana, Josep M. de
Sagarra, Enric Jardí…). They all had a decisive impact on him at the
begining of his literary and journalistic career. |
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During the last years of his law studies, Pla started
to seriously publish various poetic works. These compositions reflect a
writer with an immature and rhetorical style. However, they already showed
a synthesis of the themes of his works: passionate narrations of the
closest reality, poetical subjectivism, apparent refusal of imagination,
subtle irony, manipulation of real facts and characters. At the end of
1919, after a short stay at the newspaper Las noticias, Pla started
to work as an editor for the newspaper La Publicidad,
which soon would change its headlines into Catalan. Journalism helped him
find a more natural, concise and synthetic style. |
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Lluís Llimona with Josep Pla on Canadell beach. Calella de
Palafrugell, 1919. Fundació Josep Pla, col. Col·legi de
Periodistes Girona.
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| 1897 |
Josep Pla is born in
Palafrugell on March 8, at 49 carrer Nou, where his parents, Antoni Pla
i Villar and Maria Casadevall i Llach, are renting while the house in carrer
del Sol is being built. |
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| 1904 |
The Pla family moves to the new
house in carrer del Sol, which today is 56, carrer Torres i
Jonama. He studies primary education at “Germans Maristes”
in Palafrugell. |
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| 1909 |
He studies secondary education
at the High School of Girona and also lives in a boarding school called
Maristes. In his final year (1912-1913) he is expelled from the boarding
school and has to take his exams as an independent candidate. |
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| 1913 |
He starts his studies of
science at the University of Barcelona, but half way through the course
he decides to change to the Faculty of Law. He studies five years of law
as an officially registered student. |
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| 1917 |
His first forays into literary
prose are published in a variety of periodicals “Ofrena”, “Cenacle”,
“Diario de Gerona” and “L’Instant”. |
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| 1918 |
He starts to frequent the Ateneu
Barcelonès. Alexandre Plana becomes his literary mentor. He starts
his regular contribution to “Baix Empordà” of Palafrugell
and some of his literary prose is published in “Alt Empordà”
of Figueres and “El Camí”, of Barcelona. |
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| 1919 |
He graduates in Law. He starts
working in “Las Noticias”, and soon after he starts working
on the evening edition of “La Publicidad”. |
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Josep Pla 
