Josep Vallverdú dies, totem of children's and youth literature

Barcelona"I try to write every day, never to fail", said Josep Vallverdú in 2022, months before turning 99, when he presented one of his latest youth novels, The Eighth Dwarf (La Galera), in which he imagined an alternative version of the popular Snow White. For more than six decades – the ones separating The Fish Seller (Arimany, 1960) and Treasured Silence (Pagès, 2023)– Vallverdú dedicated himself to building, with admirable constancy, rigor, and heterogeneity, one of the most prolific works – exceeding 200 books – in contemporary Catalan literature, which this Tuesday closes with his death at 103 years old, as the ARA has been able to confirm. Death comes to him months after publishing The Return of Rovelló (La Galera, 2025), in which he revived one of the most beloved characters of his work, that of a little dog who got lost in the middle of the woods.

A great renovator of writing for children and young people in the country – along with other pillars like Joaquim Carbó, Sebastià Sorribas, and Emili Teixidor–, a chronicler of the lands of Ponent and a notable memorialist, translator, professor, late poet, and cultural activist, Josep Vallverdú decided to dedicate his professional and artistic life to letters after studying philosophy and literature, specializing in classical philology, at the University of Barcelona, where he was a colleague and friend of Joan Triadú, Josep Palau i Fabre, Antoni Badia i Margarit, and the pedagogue Isabel Arqué, whom he would eventually marry.

Born in Lleida on July 9, 1923, Vallverdú's earliest memories dated back to the advent of the Second Spanish Republic. "I still have present the photos of King Alfonso XIII leaving the country and the proclamation of the Second Republic – he explained shortly before his centenary–. I remember the death of President Macià. I remember the voice of President Companys proclaiming the Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic on October 6, 1934. I also remember how the war crushed us.

Teacher, translator, and writer

It was the Civil War that made the Vallverdús leave Lleida for Puiggròs, and later for Sant Martí de Maldà. Although in 1939 they briefly returned to live in the capital of Segrià, the family ended up settling in Barcelona. The father had a clothing store; the mother, although she had studied to be a teacher, never actually practiced. "The deprivations of the war and the post-war period consumed her health. She died at 44 years old – the author lamented –. There are two voices I always remember: my mother's and President Companys'."

After graduating and working for a period as a research assistant to Dr. Josep Rubió i Balaguer, Vallverdú and Isabel Arqué settled in Sant Feliu de Guíxols. It was there that he began to teach, signed his first translations, and wrote his first adventure novel for young adults, Las cinco vidas del 'Nereo', winner of a competition organized by a publisher from Alcoi in 1954. From 1956 onwards, settled in Balaguer with his wife and Eloi, his only son – who was diagnosed with a severe mental disability very early on –, Vallverdú began to write in Catalan. "The country was beginning to awaken from the imposed lethargy," the author explained, recalling his second debut, El venedor de peixos, published by Arimany in 1960, and which was followed by Trampa sota les aigües (Estela, 1965) and Rovelló (La Galera, 1969), one of his most popular novels, which has sold over thirty editions, has been translated into half a dozen languages, and was adapted for television by Antoni d'Ocon in 2000. "I wrote Rovelló over eleven afternoons in the summer of 1968 in a hut I built on top of an almond tree stump – Vallverdú admitted –. The book turned out perfectly for me, and it has had a great impact." The author refused to return to the character until after he was 100 years old, when he revived him in the moving and metarealistic El retorn de Rovelló.

The king of adventure novels

In parallel with the translation of dozens of novels and essays by authors such as Raymond Chandler, Graham Greene, Dashiell Hammett, Jean Piaget, Oscar Wilde and R.L. Stevenson, Josep Vallverdú became one of the most solid values in adventure novels thanks to titles such as "Roc the draper(1971), Bernat and the bandits (1974), A horse against Rome (1975) and The inventors of ghosts (1977), all of them published in La Galera that Andreu Dòria i Dexeus founded in 1963. "Joaquim Carbó, Sebastià Sorribas, Emili Teixidor and I started publishing at La Galera in the 60s. It can be said that, in a way, all four of us sacrificed a career that in other circumstances would have been different to provide a service to the community", Vallverdú admitted in 2013, days before his ninetieth birthday.

And the author added: "Writing young adult literature rejuvenates you. There is a good-naturedness that you share with the text and it ends up working in your favor." In parallel with novels for young people – and with the numerous stories he published in Cavall Fort–, Vallverdú opened a new creative door with Western processes (Destination, 1970). A finalist for the Josep Pla award, the book – which Fonoll recovered in 2022 – explains, through lived experience and social chronicle, how geography, climatology, and history have shaped the landscape and the human component, the particular rhythm of life in the west of Catalonia, where in the sixties of the 20th century, traditional forms and customs, inherited and rooted in the land, coexisted with elements of generational, economic, technological, and cultural change. The project continued in another multifaceted and unclassifiable book, "Indíbil and the fog (Destination, 1983).

Chronicler of "the wounds of time"

Starting with Vagó de tercera (Proa, 1996), Vallverdú began to recall his life. Garbinada i ponent (Proa, 1998), Desmudat i a les golfes (Proa, 2000), Però plou poc (Pagès, 2012) and Mosaic de tardor (Proa, 2023) help to sketch a life committed to the Catalan language and literature, but also turned him, in the words of Manuel Lladonosa in Serra d'Or, into "the scrutinizing eye of Western Catalonia".

"Now, having reached a committed age –it truly is, the thread of fate can break suddenly–, I experience inside a rumble of alarm as I realize the amount of events that have occurred in these fifty years, the experience gained, the wounds of time, the ruins left by storms, the void opened by absences, and I see a wide horizon before me", he wrote in the prologue of Mosaic de tardor. Based on the considerations he has for former president Jordi Pujol after receiving a letter in 2022, Vallverdú recalled the man's arrival on the Moon in 1969, the times spent with his son Eloi, the changes of address, the death of Isabel Arqué in 2012, and falling in love with Antonieta Vilajoliu when he was about to turn 90.

Although the pace of publication of youth novels has continued almost to the present –with titles such as El viatge del Dofí Rialler (Cruïlla, 1990), El vent del Far West (La Galera, 1999), and Terra de llops (Pagès, 2012)–, Vallverdú did not stop experimenting with the expressive possibilities of language, and over the last fifteen years he published nine poetry books, although his debut in this genre was in 1977, with Poemes del gos. "A point in life is reached when some things must be expressed through verses, because it is more radical, more profound, and commits you more", he stated shortly after publishing De signe cranc (Pagès, 2009).

“If we place old age before the mirror / the image we see there is an exile,” he wrote in Elegia, one of the poems included in Atresorat silenci, published by Pagès Editors months before turning 100. "Vallverdú is a man who sings life, in all its breadth –wrote Jordi Llavina when this book appeared–. A voice of celebration, not of lament, even though, as is the present case, the work does not shy away from reflection on death." With the death of Josep Vallverdú, Catalan literature loses one of its most protean voices, endowed with a language still grafted onto Noucentisme and the plasticity of some of its most beloved references, among whom are Josep Maria de Sagarra and Agustí Calvet Gaziel.