Carlos Barral i Agesta (1928–1989) was a Spanish

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

, considered (along with Jaime Gil de Biedma) to be one of the greatest poets of the so-called generation of the 1950s. He helped to establish the Formentor Group and their literary awards the Prix Formentor and the Prix International. He was also a member of the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

and an important publisher.

Biography

Carlos Barral was born in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. In 1957, he joined Víctor Seix in the management of the publishing house Seix Barral, which had been founded by his parents in 1911, and which became the most prestigious publishing house in the 1960s and thereafter. Looking for a way to further open up Spanish literature Markets, Barral organised, through the Seix Barral, a series of annual meetings of publishers, novelists and critics. These 'Coloquio Internacional de Novela' ('International Colloquium of the Novel') were held in Formentor on Majorca, Spain between 1959 and 1962, paid for by international publishers. As a compromise between literary and commercial goals, two prizes were devised: the Prix International and the Prix Formentor, to be initiated in 1961. Prize winners included Borges, Beckett and Bellow."The boom in Barcelona: literary modernism in Spanish and Spanish-American fiction (1950-1974)" by Mayder Dravasa
in Volume 130 of ''Currents in comparative Romance languages and literatures'', p73. Publisher: Peter Lang, 2005 , Barral also participated in the launching and management of the publishing house Barral Editores in 1970. Barral was a senator in the Socialists' Party of Catalonia- Spanish Socialist Workers' Party for Tarragona in 1982 and afterwards its European Parliament representative. He is best known for his two poetry books, ''Metropolitano, 19 historias de mi guerra civil'' ("Metropolitan, 19 Stories of My Civil War") and'' Lecciones de cosas'' ("Lessons of Things"), but his three volumes of

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autob ...

s are also held in high esteem.

Works

*''Metropolitano'' (1957) *''Diecinueve figuras de mi historia civil'' (1961) *''Usuras'' (1965) *''Figuración y fuga'' (1966) *''Informe personal sobre el alba'' (1970) *''Usuras y figuraciones'' (1973) *''Años de penitencia'' (1975) *''Los años sin excusa'' (1978) *''Catalunya des del mar'' (1982) *''Catalunya a vol d'ocell'' (1985) *''Lecciones de cosas: Veinte poemas para el nieto Malcolm'' (1986) *''Cuando las horas veloces'' (1988) *''Antología poética'' (1989) *''Los diarios'' (1993, published posthumously)

External links

Poems from Carlos Barral

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barral, Carlos 1928 births 1989 deaths Politicians from Barcelona Poets from Catalonia Socialists' Party of Catalonia politicians Socialists' Party of Catalonia MEPs MEPs for Spain 1987–1989 20th-century Spanish poets