The cultural footprint, surprising and little-known, of the Catalans in Argentina

Barcelona"In this solitary environment, in this infinite desert today populated by men of all the world's lineages, we Catalans also arrive, in the thousands (...) We leave Barcelona without being aware of what we are leaving or what we will find upon arrival... and the arrival at the great city of La Plata is sad... for the emigrant." These words summarize the deep longing felt, for years, by Enric Martí i Muntaner (Vilanova i la Geltrú, 1889-Buenos Aires, 1954): although he left for Argentina at the beginning of the 20th century with the aim of making his fortune, he only managed to survive in the middle of the Pampa for almost three decades, and guided by love for his country – and, above all, for his language – he undertook the verse translation of an emblematic poem by José Hernández, Martín Fierro (1872), which he managed to publish in 1936, after several vicissitudes.

"Enric Martí i Muntaner translated "}Martín Fierro" not once, but twice, because when he arrived in Buenos Aires in the 1930s with the finished poem, he learned of the reform of Catalan by Pompeu Fabra: he then set to work again to adjust to the new language regulations," recalls Montserrat Bacardí (Ciutadilla, 1962), professor at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of biographies such as "La veritat literària de Teresa Pàmies" (Eumo, 2023) and essays such as "La traducció catalana sota el franquisme" (Punctum, 2012). "This is just one of the many examples of tenacity I encountered during a two-month stay in Argentina in 2008," continues Bacardí, who detailed her discoveries – while describing a country that amazed her, despite the crisis – in a diary. She has decided to publish it now for two reasons: "I reread it by chance last year to recall things about the trip, which was already far behind me, and I liked it more than I expected. Later, talking about it with a university professor who is a friend, she encouraged me to make it known because there are few diaries written by women and even fewer by women explaining ongoing research."

The story of the activist tailor

Exiles and writings in Buenos Aires (Lleonard Muntaner, 2026) recovers and vindicates "a world on the verge of being lost" from valuable conversations with the last survivors of a cultural legacy as spectacular as it is unknown. "The history of Catalans in Argentina begins long before the exile due to the Civil War," explains Bacardí. Among the first vestiges are the Associació Catalana de Socors Mutus Montepio de Montserrat (1857) and the Casal Català (1908). "One of the most active members of these entities was Hipòlit Nadal i Mallol. He is an example of incredible constancy, perseverance, and faith," explains Bacardí. Born in 1891 in Port de la Selva, Nadal i Mallol moved to Buenos Aires when he was young and made a living as a tailor. "When his eight-hour workday ended, he would lock himself in his office to start a second workday, which was to direct, write, and administer the monthly magazine Ressorgiment —the professor continues—. He dedicated himself to it for 56 years, from 1916 to 1972, and both the figures and the results are impressive: he published 677 issues with a total of 10,860 pages. The magazine had around a thousand subscribers." Mallol also wrote a book of "reminiscences of childhood and youth in Catalonia", Algues. Proses salobres (1918) and the booklet El meu Francesc Macià (1934). "In Ressorgiment, which is a magazine that no one has studied yet, and I think it would be worthwhile, Nadal i Mallol even signed texts with about twenty pseudonyms," explains Bacardí. He died in Buenos Aires in 1978, at the age of 87.

Another admirable case is that of Gràcia Bassa i Rocas [Llofriu, 1883-Buenos Aires, 1961]. After marrying a Catalan boy, Joan Llorens, they moved to Argentina for economic reasons and achieved some prosperity with a series of businesses where they sold a bit of everything", recalls the author of Exiles and writings in Buenos Aires. The couple settled in La Pampa. From there, Gràcia Bassa published two poetry books "of Christian and at the same time intimate root" and collaborated with "all the magazines she could", from Ressorgiment to Catalunya (1930-1964), the religious bulletin Virolai (1934-1974) and the political weekly Nación Catalana (1923-1930). "She has a very extensive work, disseminated in numerous publications, of which practically no one is aware – she emphasizes –. In the 1920s, moreover, she translated a series of South American poets who were just beginning to emerge, such as Alfonsina Storni, Gabriela Mistral and Juana de Ibarbourou. It is of great value that she acted as an anthologist of these authors, whom few people knew even in their own language at the time". These versions are unpublished, and only fragments can be read, as well as her poetic and journalistic work, in the fifty-page portrait that Bacardí dedicated to the author, Gràcia Bassa, poet, journalist and translator (Ajuntament de Palafrugell, 2016), from whom also remains unpublished "a book of records of great interest", The paths of the Argentine Pampa, written in 1941.

An tireless translator

"Exile is an incomprehensible world that has never ceased to interest me and that I find inexhaustible," acknowledges Montserrat Bacardí. If she ended up traveling to Argentina in 2008, it was due to the arrival, a few years earlier, of "an unsuspected collection" at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting of the UAB, that of the writer and translator Jordi Arbonès (Barcelona, 1929—Buenos Aires, 2001). "Thanks to the personal efforts of professor and activist Ramon Piqué, Arbonès' daughter, Glòria, deposited her father's legacy at the Autònoma in 2001 —she recalls—. There were boxes and boxes of books, magazines, notebooks, diskettes, bound typescripts... Every Tuesday afternoon, for several years, a few professors dedicated themselves to organizing all that material.

Arbonès arrived in Buenos Aires in 1956. "He worked in various publishing houses, such as Poseidón, doing corrections and translations into Spanish, until in the 1960s, through Joan Oliver, who at that time directed Edicions Proa, he began to translate into Catalan –explains Bacardí–. From then on, coinciding with the growth of translations into our language, he considered that he could make a living from it." In addition to collaborating in magazines such as Ressorgiment and Catalunya, publishing narrative books and essays, he was one of the founders of Obra Cultural Catalana (1966) and, always from Buenos Aires, he translated a hundred books into Catalan over four decades by authors such as William Faulkner, Henry James, Jane Austen, D.H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Philip Larkin and Isak Dinesen (Males Herbes has just reissued Set contes gòtics).

"Arbonès also left an extensive epistolary, of which volumes are yet to appear, such as the one that will be published soon, collecting the letters between Joaquim Mallafrè and him," continues Bacardí. Since 2011, when Punctum published the correspondence between Manuel de Pedrolo and Jordi Arbonès, seven more volumes have been read, in which Arbonès dialogues with authors such as Joaquim Carbó, Francesc Parcerisas and Antoni Clapés. "The epistolaries reflect the harm done to Arbonès by the criticism of his translations, especially after the publication of El malentès del Noucentisme [Proa, 1996], in which Xavier Pericay and Ferran Toutain attacked the language model he used," says Bacardí.

The importance of Catalan theater in Buenos Aires

Exiles and writings in Buenos Aires also drew attention to some of the authors who left Catalonia as a consequence of the Civil War. "That political exile was one of those that made history – assures Bacardí–. Many of the intellectuals who left were clear that they had to fight to keep alive the country and the language they had left behind". Among them was Cèsar-August Jordana (Barcelona, 1893 - Santiago de Chile, 1958), who worked for twelve years in Buenos Aires for Editorial Sudamericana as a translator, proofreader, and advisor, while writing El món de Joan Ferrer, which he did not see published in his lifetime – the first edition is from 1971–; Joan Bas i Colomer (Mataró, 1908-Òrrius, 1984), who worked as a wholesaler but translated and staged several plays, by authors such as Max Frisch and Alexandre Breffort, and Francesc Arnó (Barcelona, 1909-2011), who made a living in the graphic arts business but had a second calling.

"Arnó was another great discovery from that trip," recalls Montserrat Bacardí. The find took place in the library of the upper floor of the Casal de Catalunya, which had been founded in 1941 as a result of the merger between the Centre Català and the Casal Català". Among that "pile of untidy papers", accumulated in "a wonderful and at the same time grotesque space" named after Joan Cunill (Barcelona, 1864 - Buenos Aires, 1954) – who has the merit of having collected, restored, bound, and inventoried hundreds of plays performed before the 1940s–, Bacardí located the typescript of the play El rinoceront, by Eugène Ionesco, which Francesc Arnó had translated in 1962. "For about thirty years, Arnó was dedicated to directing the theater of the Casal de Catalunya, and he translated into Catalan, in addition to Ionesco, Guilherme Figueiredo, Bertold Brecht, and Fernando Arrabal. He also made a stage adaptation of a story by Franz Kafka which he titled Visita a una presó model". Back in Barcelona, Bacardí was able to interview the centenarian translator, and in the same year of his death, he collected three of Ionesco's plays in a single volume, El rinoceront, El rei s'està morint and La lliçó (Punctum, 2011).

"The theater was the great center of union for the people who frequented the Casal de Catalunya. For decades, and until the 90s of the 20th century, a different play was premiered there every month," explains Montserrat Bacardí. Two of the most active figures around the Casal de Catalunya were Joan Rocamora i Cuatrecasas (Barcelona, 1914 - Buenos Aires, 2003), who also tried to summarize in writing what the place he came from was like in "Libro blanco de Cataluña" (1956), and Ignasi Almirall (Badalona, 1923 - Buenos Aires, 2015), who, in addition to hosting the Catalan radio program "L'Hora Catalana" between 1971 and 1984, acted in numerous plays.

Three pivotal and silent figures

Argentina still held a great surprise for the author of Exilis i escriptures a Buenos Aires: the numerous encounters with Fivaller Seras (Buenos Aires, 1930-2009), who at that time, at 78 years old, still opened his second-hand bookstore, D'Artagnan, daily. "Seras was the leading voice of the three surviving founders of the Obra Cultural Catalana – she says –. The other two were Jaume Garriga [Figueres, 1935], an industrial chemist who did a lot of work, always with great discretion, and Eudald Vidal [San Rafael, 1922 - Buenos Aires, 2013], who, despite being born in Argentina, where his parents had emigrated, had a great knowledge of Catalan and drafted and corrected all the Obra Cultural's programs for decades. Although Vidal did not tell me how he earned a living, I eventually learned that he had been a recognized architect who had been a professor at the University of Buenos Aires for thirty years.

Fivaller Seras perfectly exemplifies the "tenacious and silent" work of many Catalans who contributed to keeping the flame of the language alive thousands of kilometers from their country. Son of the emigrant Pere Seras, Fivaller had "almost a century of Catalan life in Argentina" in mind. Fivaller Seras "captained the Obra Cultural Catalana for more than 50 years, an entity that operated without statutes, positions, or fees and organized Catalan classes, exhibitions, conferences, theatrical performances, film screenings, and many other activities," summarizes the author of Exilis i escriptures a Buenos Aires. "He was a man of radical modesty, one of those figures who don't normally appear in books – she defends –. He worked tirelessly, but he had a firm will not to appear and not to sign any text. This does not mean, of course, that he didn't write any." Bacardí spent every morning for a whole month with Seras, interviewing him during long sessions to build, with all the material he obtained, a volume of memoirs. A year later, while Catalans a Buenos Aires. Records de Fivaller Seras (Pagès, 2009) was at the printers, the bookseller and activist died as a result of an unexpected cardiac complication.