Caterina Albert: A hundred years since ‘Solitude’ publication

The Symposium on “Caterina Albert: A hundred years since ‘Solitude’ publication” was held at the Residence for Researchers CSIC-Generalitat de Catalunya, in Barcelona, from November 18 to 19, 2005. The objective was to celebrate the anniversary of Caterina Albert i Paradís’ most important work’s publication. She was better known as “Victor Català” the pseudonymous she was pushed to use due to the social conditions of her time.

The Symposium, coordinated by the writer Marta Pessarrodona, one of our institution’s adviser, tried –and succeeded- to gather official and non official participants from the city and  more than twenty scholars and/or admirers of L’Escala writer’s work; undoubtedly universal, in the capital city of Catalonia. Josep M Guinart, major of L’Escala, and Marisa Josep Dubé, responsible for the Culture Department of the mentioned Ampurdanese City Hall, along with Jordi and Lurdes Boix, Josep Tero and Carme Callol were present, just to mention but a few. Pep Vila’s participation should also be remarked, who coordinated, together with Enric Prat, the three day Conference on the authoress’ life and work, which by this time it has already been held in L’Escala, a place that allowed Caterina Albert to be a prophet in her own land.     

From the very beginning, we considered the plural personality, but always artistic, of Caterina Albert / “Víctor Català” (1869-1966). Although she would owe her fame to her literature —not only at national level— her contribution in other fields (arts, archaeology, music) were also covered by the Symposium. We chose a name for the Symposium which meant that we did not want to have any complicity with the violence against gender (harmless, in fact) she suffered after the Olot Literary Competence, in 1898, when she was obliged to adopt her pseudonymous “Victor Català”.