Maruxa Vilalta

Maria Vilalta i Soteras (23 September 1932 – 19 August 2014) was a Catalan-born Mexican playwright and a theatre director. Her plays have been translated, published and produced in numerous countries. She won the critic’s prize for the best play of the year ten times. In November 2010 she was awarded the National Prize for Arts and Sciences in the field of Linguistics and Literature, for her work which has national and international resonance. President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa gave her the award at Mexico's National Palace.

Early life and education Maruxa Vilalta was born in Barcelona in 1932, daughter of lawyer Antonio Vilalta y Vidal, and María Soteras Maurí. Antonio Her father was a supporter for the Estatut de la Generalitat and one of the founders of Esquerra Republicana party. He was also a distinguished jurist, elected and proclaimed deputy of the Ilustre Colegio de Abogados de Barcelona. María Soteras was the first woman to graduate with a degree in law from the University of Barcelona and she was also a member of the Colegio de Abogados. In 1936, at the start of the Civil War in Spain, they went in exile to Brussels and they arrived in Mexico by the way of New York City in 1939. She became a Mexican citizen at eight years of age. She received all her education in Mexico, from primary school and then six years of French baccalauréat at the Liceo Franco Mexicano. She enrolled in the School of Liberal Arts at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where she studied for a master's degree in Spanish literature.

Early career Vilalta started as a novelist. Her first works were El castigo (The Punishment) in 1957, Los desorientados (The Disoriented Ones), reprinted several times in 1959, and Dos colores para el paisaje (Two Colors for the Landscape) in 1961. She adapted Los desorientados for the theatre and since the first performance, in 1960, she began her career as a playwright. She wrote dramas and some short stories, among them El otro día, la muerte (The Other Day, Dead), a 1974 collection which includes Diálogos del narrador, la muerte y su invitado (Dialogues of the Narrator, Death and Her Guest), Romance con la muerte de agua (The Romance of Watery Death), Aventura con la muerte de fuego (Adventure with Fiery Death), and Morir temprano, mientras comulga el general (To Die Early, While the General Receives Communion).