Guillermo Díaz-Plaja

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Guillermo Díaz-Plaja Contestí (24 May 1909 – 27 July 1984) was a Spanish literary critic, historian, essayist and poet. Born in Manresa as the son of an army officer, his family moved to Barcelona soon after. He studied at the Colegio de Escuelas Pías and, during his adolescence, with the Marist Brothers in Girona. Díaz-Plaja began Philosophy and Letters studies at the University of Barcelona, taking his first-year exams as an external student and becoming an official student in 1927. He graduated in 1930 and earned a doctorate at the Central University in Madrid, where he studied under Ramón Menéndez Pidal.

In 1932 he started teaching at the Institut Escola de Barcelona. At 26 he won the National Prize for Literature for Introducción al estudio del Romanticismo español (1936), and in 1961 he received the City of Barcelona essay prize for Viatge a l'Atlàntida i retorn a Ítaca (1962). He taught at the Jaime Balmes Institute from 1935 and at the University School of Business Studies of the University of Barcelona from 1972 to 1979. He also taught at the San Jorge Superior School of Fine Arts and at the Barcelona Provincial Council's School of Commerce.

Díaz-Plaja directed the Barcelona Theater Institute from 1939 to 1970 and the Spanish National Book Institute from 1966 to 1970. He belonged to CSIC, the Hispanic Society, the Royal Spanish Academy and Barcelona’s Royal Academy of Letters, and he led the Association of Literary Critics and the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists from 1979 to 1984. He received honorary doctorates from the University of San Marcos (Peru) in 1973, the University of Cuyo (Argentina) in 1981, and the University of Strasbourg in 1982.

He wrote more than two hundred works, including popular books, textbooks, poetry and essays. His research covered Modernism, Romanticism and Baroque, and he analyzed poets such as Lorca, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Valle-Inclán. His notable studies on Eugenio d’Ors are particularly recognized. He created anthologies, edited texts and coordinated large projects, including Historia general de las literaturas hispánicas, which brought together many scholars’ studies.

Díaz-Plaja’s teaching shaped several generations of students. He also wrote autobiographical works like Memoria de una generación destruid (1966), engaged with contemporary cultural issues, produced travel essays from around the world, and wrote poetry. In Catalan, his early cinema studies, avant-garde work and poetry helped foster dialogue between Spanish cultures.