Jaume Vallcorba Plana

Jaume Vallcorba Plana at the delivery of the National Culture Awards of Catalonia 2014. Santa Coloma de Gramenet, June 2, 2014

Jaume (or Santiago) Vallcorba Plana (21 September 1949 – 23 August 2014) was a Spanish philologist and publisher.

Life and career Born in Tarragona, Catalonia, he completed an Arts degree at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and obtained a PhD at the University of Barcelona with a thesis on Josep Maria Junoy and the early European avant-garde movements. He was a lecturer and professor in Literature at the University of Bordeaux, the University of Lleida, the University of Barcelona and the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona) but he left university teaching in 2004.

He was a permanent member of the Royal Academy of Doctors of Catalonia and a scholar of medieval aesthetics and literature. He founded the publishing houses Quaderns Crema in 1979 and Editorial Acantilado in 1999 and has been director of both since their inception. He is recognised for his contribution of offering a new perspective on the early-twentieth-century avant-garde movements. Through his publishing house, he published Catalan authors, including Quim Monzó, Sergi Pàmies and Empar Moliner. His catalogue included new Spanish editions of authors such as Chateaubriand, James Boswell and Montaigne, along with a considerable number of European authors, from Pessoa, to Imre Kertész, Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth. He has introduced to Spanish readers translations of a considerable number of contemporary Central European writers as well as works by newer Spanish writers.

He published numerous studies on aesthetics and literature and was directly commissioned by the poet J. V. Foix to publish his poetic oeuvre. He also published Junoy’s poetry.

He died on 23 August 2014, at the age of 64.

Prizes Among the prizes and awards Jaume Vallcorba Plana has received are the following: FAD (Promotion of the Decorative Arts) Gold Medal (2001) National Prize for Best Individual Contribution to Publishing, 2002 City Council of Barcelona Gold Medal for Cultural Merit (2004) Grand Order of Merit for Cultural Contribution, conceded by the Republic of Poland (2005) Publishing Merit Award at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (2010) Nominee to International Zbigniew Herbert Award First Edition, Poland, 2013 National Prize of Culture, conceded by the Government of Catalonia (2014)