Goodbye to Maria Carme Dalmau, the editor who overcame a thousand and one obstacles to promote Catalan culture

BarcelonaWithout the persistence of the publisher Maria Carme Dalmau, we would surely be missing many reference works on the history and heritage of Catalonia today. She worked tirelessly, even during the greyness and repression of Francoism, to disseminate and make accessible to the public books that explained the country's past, geography, and traditions. And she did so by overcoming very significant legal and economic obstacles. She circumvented censorship through a thousand and one stratagems. Born in Barcelona in 1930, the publisher died this Thursday at the age of 96.

Dalmau was born among books and always lived among them. She could not finish her studies and was self-taught. She entered the world of publishing at a very young age. At twelve years old, she began to help at the Llibreria Dalmau in Barcelona, and at fifteen, she joined fully. Between 1946 and 1959, she worked at Editorial Dalmau y Jover. In 1959, together with her father, Rafael Dalmau i Ferreres, she founded Rafael Dalmau Editor, which she directed between 1971 and 1996. It is impossible to encompass everything she edited and published. One of the first books she published was Mosaic, by Víctor Català. Among the collections she promoted are the Episodis de la Història, with 379 issues to date, and Els Castells Catalans, in six volumes. She was the publisher of the work Món casteller, directed by Pere Català i Roca, her husband, which contributed decisively to the dissemination and dignification of the human tower tradition. In 1978, she participated in the founding of the Associació d’Editors en Llengua Catalana (1978). She was a pioneer: she was the only woman. Throughout her life, she accompanied hundreds of writers.

Her career was recognized with various awards. In 1985, she received the Creu de Sant Jordi, and in 2017, the Premi Isidre de Rabassó d’Identitat Castellera. In 2021, at the age of ninety-one, she received the Premi Nacional de Cultura. When she received the award, she recalled when the historian Ferran Soldevila visited her father with the idea that "Catalans should read a history article at least once a month." That was the birth of the emblematic Episodis de la Història. Maria Carme Dalmau was the one who traveled to Madrid to obtain the permits to launch a collection of brief, inexpensive, and popular history books about Catalonia that, 65 years later, remains active.