Carlos Barral i Agesta was a Spanish poet

Spanish poetry

Spanish poetry is the poetic tradition of Spain. It may include elements of Spanish literature, and literatures written in languages of Spain other than Castilian, such as Catalan literature....

, considered (along with Jaime Gil de Biedma

Jaime Gil de Biedma

Jaime Gil de Biedma y Alba was a Spanish post-Civil War poet.He was born in Nava de la Asunción on November 13, 1929. He stopped writing poetry some ten years before his death...

) to be one of the greatest poets of the so-called generation of the 1950s. He helped to establish the Formentor Group

Prix Formentor

The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...

 and their literary awards the Prix Formentor

Prix Formentor

The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...

 and the Prix International

Prix Formentor

The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...

. He was also a member of the European Parliament

European Parliament

The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union . Together with the Council of the European Union and the Commission, it exercises the legislative function of the EU and it has been described as one of the most powerful legislatures in the world...

 and an important publisher.

Biography

Carlos Barral was born in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, Catalonia

Catalonia

Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

. 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

Prix Formentor

The Prix Formentor was an international literary prize awarded between 1961 and 1967. The Formentor Group offered two prizes, the Prix Formentor and the Prix International, . The Prix Formentor was given to previously unpublished work and the the Prix International was given to work already in...

, to be initiated in 1961. Prize winners included Borges, Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

 and Bellow

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3cIUJBuDwR0C&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=%22Prix+International%22+literature+beckett+borges&source=bl&ots=lut15a_Upx&sig=ClTRiIoNIwcfUPDzuU_7yzETmSk&hl=en&ei=jFqmTsr3DY6u8QO6qrTNDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Prix%20International%22%20formentor%20beckett%20borges&f=false"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
ISBN 0820468274,

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

Socialists' Party of Catalonia

The Socialists' Party of Catalonia is a social-democratic political party in Catalonia, Spain resulting from the merge of two parties PSC Reagrupament led by Josep Pallach i Carolà and PSC Comgres. It is the Catalan referent of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , and its Aranese section is...

-Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...

 party for Tarragona

Tarragona

Tarragona is a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain, by the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the capital of the Catalan comarca Tarragonès. In the medieval and modern times it was the capital of the Vegueria of 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

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

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)