Writer and professor Teresa Juvé dies at 104

BarcelonaCatalan literature has just lost one of its most distinctive voices, that of Teresa Juvé, who didn't debut as a crime novelist – the genre in which she was best known – until she was 76, and who didn't stop writing until practically her death, which took place this Tuesday in Palamós, as confirmed by ACN.

Born in Madrid on February 7, 1921, Juvé studied at the Ausiàs March School Institute in Barcelona and went into exile in France with her family during the Civil War. After serving as a liaison officer for the French Resistance during the Second World War from Toulouse, she settled in Paris, where she taught philosophy and literature. Married with the politician Josep Pallach (1920-1977), with whom she had a daughter, Antònia, Teresa Juvé combined teaching – first in France and from 1970 at a high school in Roses – with activism and writing. Her literary career began in 1963 with The pond in the city, finalist for the Nadal Prize, and continued in several novels in Spanish, until the mid-1990s when the character of Jaume Plagumà, "spokesperson for King Philip II", was invented, who investigates crimes in the Crown of Aragon at the end of the 16th century. The spokesperson was wrong (Columna, 1997) inaugurated a series of novels that includes a dozen titles, among them Deadly Toy (Proa, 2002), The trap (Meteora, 2014) and Lamentation for a Lost Lady (MMV, 2023).

An expert and ironic look

Teresa Juvé was a specialist in Occitan literature of the 16th and 17th centuries and recreated the period with great rigor: "The setting is very scrupulous and conveys a great deal of knowledge about what society was like back then," said Toni Terrades, curator of the year that the Generalitat (Catalan government) dedicated to the author, coinciding with her centenary. He is a confirmed bachelor who looks around ironically and whose adventure partner is Judge Joanola.

Juvé lived less than 200 meters from the Esclanyà cemetery, but she has not set foot there since her husband was buried, which recently prompted the biography. Josep Pallach, politics and biography, written by Joan Safont and published in Pòrtic. "She says she shouldn't go to the cemetery to do anything, because she is with him and he is with her, and that they talk every day," recalled Josep Maria Soler, president of the Pallach Foundation. Now, after almost five decades apart, their bodies will be reborn together.

Teresa Juvé's death has provoked reactions from institutions such as the ILC ("She was a living history of our literature and a humanist in the fullest sense of the term"), journalists such as Silvia Cóppulo ("A committed, strong and loving woman has died") and theMeteora publishing house, with whom she published numerous books ("We deeply regret the death of the dean of Catalan literature, Teresa Juvé. A great woman."