Joan Sales

Joan Sales i Vallès (Barcelona, November 19, 1912 – November 12, 1983) was a Catalan writer poet, translator and editor. His best known work is the novel Uncertain glory (recently translated into English).

As editor, he founded, with Xavier Benguerel, Club Editor, the publisher house of The Time of the Doves from Mercè Rodoreda and Bearn o La sala de les nines from Villalonga, among other important works. He was a promoter of the journal Quaderns de l'exili ("Exile notebooks").

He was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi in 1982.

For 500 years, the Catalans have been fools. Is it, then, stop being Catalans? No, but stop being stupid.

Joan Sales i Vallès was born in November 19, 1912, at the Eixample district of Barcelona, in a family originally from Vallclara, in Conca de Barberà. His familiar surroundings progresses, at a political level, from traditionalism to the Catalan nationalism closer to Lliga Regionalista. When his father's business goes to ruin, the family is determined to remain at Vallclara. But Sales, who by the time has became bachelor in Lleida, move to Barcelona despite he is only seventeen.

Joan Sales acted very young in opposition to the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera.He was also one of the first Catalan language teachers of the official census of the Generalitat of Catalonia formed by Pompeu Fabra.

He graduated with a degree in law at the University of Barcelona in 1932. He affiliated with Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, which will leave soon. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he graduated at the School of War and was appointed official. He felt sorrow about the anarchy in the rear and in his desire to help to maintain the power of the Republican Government of Generalitat he went to the fronts of Madrid and Aragon. In 1933, he married Maria Núria Folch, Catalan publisher, with whom he had a daughter the same year: Núria Sales Folch.

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