Barcelona Metropolis

The photograph in question also featured on the first page of the article “Gabriel Ferrater, esbós d’una biografia juvenil” [Gabriel Ferrater, Sketch of a Youthful Biography], which Gomis published in Serra d’Or in June 1977. By then, five years had passed since the poet of Les dones i els dies [Women and Days] had taken his own life, and journalist Ramon Barnils was considering writing a biography of Ferrater. Just a few months later, Josep Miquel Servià published an award-winning, though hastily prepared, report on Ferrater’s life, pieced together from interviews of varying reliability.

The contrast between Servià’s small booklet and Gomis’s article was striking, but both had embarked on their search because they were captivated by a figure who had taken on an almost mythical status. Gomis, born in Reus in 1946, has explained this. He was part of a group of young people from Reus who were passionate about literature, poetry and theatre. His girlfriend, Rosa Cabré, had attended Ferrater’s lectures on Carner at the University of Barcelona, and in 1970, Lluís Pasqual had interviewed him for the magazine still known as the Revista del Centro de Lectura de Reus. The group suggested to Ferrater that he joined the jury for one of the Reus Theatre Prizes. He accepted. Gomis took the minutes of the jury meeting to Sant Cugat for Ferrater to sign.

It was the first and last time Gomis saw him. After the suicide, he visited Ferrater’s mother at the flat on Carrer Benet Mateu, where she, Amàlia Soler, had lived with her eldest son. When she also took her own life, Gomis began his search. It was 1974. Half a century has passed since then. Ferrater fascinated him and the biography could only be grounded in the knowledge of people and a reality that was Gomis’s own. He was able to get in touch with Joan Ferraté, friends from his youth like Pitu Massó, who gave him that photograph and others, and, furthermore, he was determined to cross-check what Ferrater had said about himself and his family (in interviews and in poems that appeared autobiographical) with any documents he could find in the archives. Using this information, he wrote a book that has since become a key reference: El Gabriel Ferrater de Reus [The Gabriel Ferrater from Reus] (1998). So why has Gomis returned once more to Ferrater’s childhood and youth?

For two compelling reasons. The first is that, with the passing of years and from a broader perspective, Gomis has distanced himself from Ferrater’s “personal mythology” (a term coined by Marta Pessarrodona) and has returned to the biography with a more realistic viewpoint. The most significant discovery in this regard is the description of Ferrater’s maternal lineage, particularly his grandmother Rosselló, who came from a family of industrialists and landowners. This branch of the family is essential to understanding the bourgeois comfort in which Ferrater grew up, yet one to which he never referred.

A more plausible story

Similarly, the account Ferrater himself created of his experience during the war and his subsequent flight to Bordeaux is now presented by Gomis with greater plausibility: the main reason for leaving Spain was to avoid Gabriel being conscripted. And their stay in France was only possible because they were still wealthy enough to undertake an indefinite journey and live for a long period in a château-like lifestyle. That world came to an end when they returned to post-war Reus. The coats from those days were now garments of a bygone world.