Joan Margarit

Joan Margarit was a Catalan poet and architect born in 1938 in Sanaüja, Lleida. He is considered the greatest Catalan-language poet of the second half of the twentieth century, and one of the great European poets of his era. He worked for many years as a professor of structures at the Barcelona School of Architecture while simultaneously building one of the most important bodies of poetry in any Iberian language. Margarit published his first collection in 1963 and gradually shifted to writing exclusively in Catalan, producing a vast body of work that includes Cálculo de estructuras (1984), Turia Reial (1994), Joana (2002), and Casa de Misericòrdia (2007). His poetry is deeply personal, often addressed to his daughter Joana who died of Down syndrome complications, and deals with grief, aging, love, memory, and the relationship between architecture and poetry. He received the Premio Cervantes in 2019, a historically significant recognition of a poet writing in Catalan — the prize is for contributions to Spanish-language literature, but Margarit's work, available in Spanish self-translation, was recognized as part of the broader Iberian literary heritage. Margarit died in February 2021 in Castelldefels. He was a beloved and deeply respected figure in both Catalan and Spanish literary culture.