This research intends to give a vision of Catalan culture in the aftermath of the Franco regime and the first years of the transition through the figure of Josep Pla and the controversy associated with it because of the repeated non-concession of the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, the most relevant Catalan literary lifetime achievement award.
They take as central point of reference the controversy that sparked around the figure of Josep Pla and the repeated non-award of the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, this work aims to give a vision of Catalan culture in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century; were the final years of the Franco dictatorship and the beginning of the transition. They were years of tension and hope; the sensibility was very marked and the impatience for the new times of freedom that were sensed, too. They were times of effervescence of a new incipient Catalanism, which struggled to become present in society, and which were accompanied by a push from the Catalan culture of opposition; “a new Renaixença“, in the words of Joan Triadú. Both initiatives pursued the same objective, the recovery of dignity as a people and the moral, cultural and political reconstruction of our country. Writers, literary critics, and intellectuals in general took a position clearly against political and cultural events.
In this cultural and political environment, the most prolific and read Catalan writer of the last century wrote and reached his audience, through the weekly article in Destino, and the publication of his Obres Completes by the same publisher. And it did not do so with the indifference of readers and critics, but on the contrary, arousing well-wrought passions. Some accused him of collaborating with the regime, others praised the chronicler of Catalan society and geography. His prose is vulgar, these said; those of beyond saw in their diaphanous style, the normality and the flat tone of their work that breaks with the rigidity and the sophistication of the writers of the previous generation. It is, then, an essay of cultural history, of the history of ideas, small if you like, but in the end they are the ones that move History.
The approach of the objectives of this work, once chosen the theme, has been to approach each of the protagonists of the controversy, trying to see and analyze the motivations that led them to act as they did, to defend what They believed that he deserved it and condemned it. Needless to say, the figure of Josep Pla has deserved special attention; he is the subject of attention, he is the center of the controversy. But I did not want to neglect, on the other hand, the rest of the participants in these events: the Premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes, its purpose, and Òmnium Cultural, the entity that instituted it; without forgetting finally the cultural environment in which they all moved.
