Josep Piera dies, the writer and poet who knew how to transmit the passion for life and literature

BarcelonaThe Valencian poet, narrator, essayist, columnist, and translator, Josep Piera (Beniopa, Gandía, 1947), has passed away at the age of 78. He considered himself primarily a poet, but he left behind a handful of memorable prose books, including El cingle verd (Destino, 1982) – with which he won the Josep Pla award – Estiu grec (Destino, 1985) and Ací s'acaba tot (Edicions 62, 1993), which the young publishing house Cap de Brot reissued in a corrected and expanded version. In 2023, he received the 55th Honorary Award for Catalan Literature, presented by Òmnium Cultural. At that time, he expressed his astonishment at receiving the award and how he understood literature: "This business of writing on behalf of everyone seems extraordinarily presumptuous to me. One writes about what one knows, what one feels, and about oneself. But that must become shareable, symbolic. Otherwise, why on earth would it interest others? This is where literature comes in, and I am an animal of words," he assured.

Just fifteen days ago, when he was admitted, the only thing he was concerned about was that his editor, Pilar Beltrán, would receive the latest version of Una amistat proscrita, which Edicions 62 will publish. "He was anxious to get it to me, and it is a project that has kept him very excited and motivated in recent times," Beltrán assures. It is a historical novel about the Borja family in the Valencia of the Golden Age. "Piera was a very vital person, who sought contact with nature but also to share time with friends. For him, literature was everything, he lived for literature," explains Beltrán. "He had many facets: narrative, poetry, memoir, travel novels… They may seem like different worlds, but it is all a single corpus. He was very sensory. It's incredible how he described, for example, the smells," she adds.

It had been a long time since my health had been precarious. Just over a year ago, in an interview with ARA, he explained that he was still polishing his memoirs and recalled the emotion of receiving the Honor Prize. "I still remember the afternoon they gave me the award at the Palau. Everyone was applauding me and I raised my arms to thank them. I was hallucinating and I hadn't taken anything, I promise you!". Piera was also a great cultural activist, with activities such as the Year of Tirant and the magazine Cairell. With his poetry, he transformed memory, experiences, and concrete places into something intimate that he knew how to convey to the reader. With his words, he was able to take the reader through cities and characters from the various shores of the Mediterranean.

Piera studied teaching in Valencia, where he coincided with the literary movement known as the Generation of the 70s, of which he was one of its greatest representatives. In 1974, he left the city of Valencia to go and live, with his partner, in La Drova (Barx), where he spent his childhood summers and where he ended up being one of the mythical landscapes of his work. In 1979, he won the Carles Riba prize with El somriure de l'herba (1980). Also during these years, he began to travel around the Mediterranean. In Ací s'acaba tot (1993) he precisely recounts his first trip to Sicily and the long period he spent hospitalized in Gandia due to a severe outbreak of Crohn's disease, which at that time was not well known. "At 40 years old, I had to learn to be someone else – he recalls now –. Living almost a year in a hospital, very ill, made me human. Every insignificance I achieved became a marvel. I will never forget the day I was able to leave my room and look, through the window, how the children left school and the old people chatted in the street," he told ARA.

Passion for southern Italy

The writer and poet greatly enjoyed those trips, taking a notebook for notes and his camera. He traveled to countries like Greece, Morocco, Israel, and southern Italy. "While I was a Catalan lecturer in Naples during the 1985-1986 academic year, I realized that my Italy is the southern one –he admitted–. Naples and, later, Sicily, educated me to understand the beauty of degradation. I realized there was no great difference between the piles of garbage everywhere and the sculptures and installations in museums".

In 1980, he left the world of pedagogy behind to dedicate himself fully to writing. In 1981, he won the Josep Pla prize with El cingle verd (1982). The title, written as a diary, is a real place, a spur of the Aldaia mountain range, and Piera, in the first person, expressed his love for his land, but also reflected on the passage of time. During this period, he wrote Estiu grec (1985) and Estiu grec (1985) and Un bellíssim cadàver barroc (1987). From 1991 to 1993, he directed the publishing house Tres i Quatre. In 1991, he was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi.

A great biographer

Piera was also a great biographer. In each of these biographies, Piera tried to understand the person she was portraying, to see beyond. He managed to give March a more human profile in Yo soy este que me llamo Ausiàs March (2001); he distanced Francisco de Borja from mystical and religious excesses in Francisco de Borja, el duque santo (2009), Joanot Martorell prize, and was very rigorous and balanced in El sueño de una patria de palabras (2012), about Teodor Llorente, Mancomunidad de la Ribera Alta Essay Prize.

Lately, he had resumed his memoir cycle, which includes titles such as Puta posguerra (Ediciones 62, 2007) and Cambio de rumbo (Alfonso el Magnánimo, 2023).