Gaziel
Encyclopedia
Agustí Calvet Pascual (Sant Feliu de Guíxols
; October 7, 1887 – Barcelona
; April 12, 1964), known as Gaziel (gəziˈɛɫ), was a Catalan
Spanish
journalist
, writer
and publisher.
in Barcelona and in Madrid
, where he earned his doctorate. His doctoral thesis was on Anselm Turmeda
, and was published in 1914 as Fray Anselmo de Turmeda. Heterodoxo español 1352-1423-32?.
He then went to Paris
to further his studies and, at the outbreak of the First World War, he acted as war correspondent
for La Vanguardia
, the most influential newspaper in Barcelona, with such a success that very shortly most of his articles were brought together and published in four successive books: Diario de un estudiante en París (Diary of a student in Paris) (1916), Narraciones de tierras heroicas (Tales of heroic lands) (1916), De París a Monastir (From Paris to Monastir) (1917) and En las líneas de fuego (In the fire lines) (1917); and he became a full-time journalist. It was then when he began to use Gaziel as pseudonym
. He had married a French lady in 1914.
In the years preceding the Spanish civil war Gaziel was appointed editor in chief
of La Vanguardia, and he was widely seen as the most incisive political analyst in Spain. At the beginning of the war, in July 1936, he had to flee to France, as his life was in risk due to the political repression
led by anarchist and Communist militias, while his home in Barcelona, including his valuable personal library, was sacked.
when the German invasion in 1940 forced him to return to Spain, where he was received with undisguised hostility by the new Francoist authorities, despite having been the cultural attaché
of their Embassy in Belgium and having signed in 1937 a manifesto
-promoted by Francesc Cambó
- in support of the nationalist side in the Civil War; while Carlos Godó, the owner of La Vanguardia, prevented him from returning to his position in the newspaper. As a consequence he lived in Madrid, as general manager of the Editorial Plus Ultra publishing house.
In the late forties he wrote Meditaciones en el desierto (Meditations in the desert), a depressing view on the situation of Spain and, more generally, of Europe
in the postwar years.
In the early 1950s
he travelled through Castile
, Galicia and Portugal
. As a result of these travels he wrote, and published a decade later, his so-called Iberian
trilogy
: Portugal lejano (Portugal far away), Castilla adentro (Castile inside) and La península inacabada (The unfinished peninsula), where he mixed the interesting diaries of his trips with his profound reflections on the historical and political coexistence between Portugal, Catalonia
and Castile (or Spain in a broader sense), an issue that worried him all along his life.
Two professional travels, to Switzerland
and Italy
, to attend International Publishers Congresses
produced two respective books, Seny
, treball i llibertat (Sensibleness, work and freedom) and L'home és el tot (The man is everything). In the first one, perhaps his masterpiece
, he displayed his absolute admiration for the Swiss political and social structure, that he thought as the ideal answer to the regional complexities of Spain
. In the second one he showed himself captivated by the magnificent renaissance
art in Florence
and took the opportunity to express his most profound aversion to the mass society
.
In 1959, after his retirement from Editorial Plus Ultra, Gaziel moved back to Barcelona, where he resumed on a full-time basis his writing activity. His reappearance, at his 72, in the Catalan literary arena took by surprise the cultural Establishment
of Barcelona. Just before his dead, in 1964, he finished off Història de La Vanguardia (1881-1936) (History of La Vanguardia (1881-1936)), a key book in the history of Spanish journalism and Gaziel's personal settling of scores with Carlos Godó.
In October 2009 a new compilation of Gaziel's articles on the First World War, including several ones not collected in the 1915-1917 books, En las trincheras (In the trenches), has been published.
or Spanish
(actually he published eight works in Spanish and fourteen in Catalan, while his almost daily writing in La Vanguardia along twelve years was in Spanish); and while he always saw himself as a genuine Catalan
he never fully backed the Catalan nationalism
, as he made clear in his posthumous work, Quina mena de gent som (What kind of people we are). Although strictly speaking he did not belong to the Noucentisme
Catalan cultural movement, he was close to it and always admired Eugeni d'Ors
and, above all, Enric Prat de la Riba
.
On the other hand, since his youth he was a wholehearted francophile
, a stance that was still increased along the rest of his life, although he always deeply regretted the general French ignorance, or disdain, of the French Catalonia history and specificity or even of its mere existence. On the contrary, in the second half of his life he developed a clear socio-cultural, not political, antiamericanism.
All in all, Gaziel was, first and foremost, a liberal
, conservative, eurocentric bourgeois, and, like many cultured men of his time, he was well aware of the dramatic, and to them disappointing, changes the world had experienced along the first half of the 20th century, to the point that in Portugal far away he wrote: I am not any more a man of the present times, neither of the future.
Sant Feliu de Guíxols
Sant Feliu de Guíxols is a municipality in the comarca of the Baix Empordà inCatalonia, Spain. It is situated on the Costa Brava and is an important port and tourist centre. The district abuts to the north, the upmarket s'Agaró resort built round the Sant Pol Beach. In addition to tourism and the...
; October 7, 1887 – 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...
; April 12, 1964), known as Gaziel (gəziˈɛɫ), was a Catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
Spanish
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
and publisher.
Before the Spanish Civil War
He studied humanitiesHumanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
in Barcelona and in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, where he earned his doctorate. His doctoral thesis was on Anselm Turmeda
Anselm Turmeda
Anselm Turmeda or Abd-Allah at-Tarjuman was a Majorcan writer born in Palma in 1355 and died in Tunis in 1423. Early in his life he was a Franciscan friar, but converted later to Islam from Christianity and lived in Tunis. He is one of few writers who have written in Arabic and a European...
, and was published in 1914 as Fray Anselmo de Turmeda. Heterodoxo español 1352-1423-32?.
He then went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to further his studies and, at the outbreak of the First World War, he acted as war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
for La Vanguardia
La Vanguardia
La Vanguardia is Catalonia's leading daily newspaper as well as the fourth best-selling in Spain. It has its headquarters in Barcelona, Catalonia's largest city....
, the most influential newspaper in Barcelona, with such a success that very shortly most of his articles were brought together and published in four successive books: Diario de un estudiante en París (Diary of a student in Paris) (1916), Narraciones de tierras heroicas (Tales of heroic lands) (1916), De París a Monastir (From Paris to Monastir) (1917) and En las líneas de fuego (In the fire lines) (1917); and he became a full-time journalist. It was then when he began to use Gaziel as pseudonym
Pseudonym
A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...
. He had married a French lady in 1914.
In the years preceding the Spanish civil war Gaziel was appointed editor in chief
Editor in chief
An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...
of La Vanguardia, and he was widely seen as the most incisive political analyst in Spain. At the beginning of the war, in July 1936, he had to flee to France, as his life was in risk due to the political repression
Political repression
Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take political life of society....
led by anarchist and Communist militias, while his home in Barcelona, including his valuable personal library, was sacked.
After the Spanish Civil War
He was in BrusselsBrussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
when the German invasion in 1940 forced him to return to Spain, where he was received with undisguised hostility by the new Francoist authorities, despite having been the cultural attaché
Cultural attaché
A cultural attaché is a diplomat with special responsibility for promoting the culture of his or her homeland. The position has been used as an official cover for intelligence agents. Historically, the post has often been filled by writers and artists, giving them a steady income, allowing them to...
of their Embassy in Belgium and having signed in 1937 a manifesto
Manifesto
A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
-promoted by Francesc Cambó
Francesc Cambó
Francesc Cambó i Batlle was a conservative Catalan politician, founder and leader of the autonomist party Lliga Regionalista. He was minister in several Spanish governments...
- in support of the nationalist side in the Civil War; while Carlos Godó, the owner of La Vanguardia, prevented him from returning to his position in the newspaper. As a consequence he lived in Madrid, as general manager of the Editorial Plus Ultra publishing house.
In the late forties he wrote Meditaciones en el desierto (Meditations in the desert), a depressing view on the situation of Spain and, more generally, of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in the postwar years.
In the early 1950s
1950s
The 1950s or The Fifties was the decade that began on January 1, 1950 and ended on December 31, 1959. The decade was the sixth decade of the 20th century...
he travelled through Castile
Castile (historical region)
A former kingdom, Castile gradually merged with its neighbours to become the Crown of Castile and later the Kingdom of Spain when united with the Crown of Aragon and the Kingdom of Navarre...
, Galicia and Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
. As a result of these travels he wrote, and published a decade later, his so-called Iberian
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
trilogy
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
: Portugal lejano (Portugal far away), Castilla adentro (Castile inside) and La península inacabada (The unfinished peninsula), where he mixed the interesting diaries of his trips with his profound reflections on the historical and political coexistence between Portugal, 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...
and Castile (or Spain in a broader sense), an issue that worried him all along his life.
Two professional travels, to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, to attend International Publishers Congresses
International Publishers Association
The International Publishers Association is an international publishing industry federation of national Publisher associations representing book and journal publishing. It is a non-profit and non-governmental organization, founded in 1896 to promote and protect publishing and to raise awareness...
produced two respective books, Seny
Seny
Seny is a form of ancestral Catalan wisdom or sensibleness. It involves well-pondered perception of situations, level-headedness, awareness, integrity and right action. The opposite of seny is known as rauxa "foolish recklessness"....
, treball i llibertat (Sensibleness, work and freedom) and L'home és el tot (The man is everything). In the first one, perhaps his masterpiece
Masterpiece
Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....
, he displayed his absolute admiration for the Swiss political and social structure, that he thought as the ideal answer to the regional complexities of Spain
Autonomous communities of Spain
An autonomous community In other languages of Spain:*Catalan/Valencian .*Galician .*Basque . The second article of the constitution recognizes the rights of "nationalities and regions" to self-government and declares the "indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation".Political power in Spain is...
. In the second one he showed himself captivated by the magnificent renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
art in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and took the opportunity to express his most profound aversion to the mass society
Mass society
Mass society is a description associated with society in the modern, industrial era. "Guided by the structural-functional approach and drawing on the ideas of Tönnies, Durkheim, and Weber, understands modernity as the emergence of a mass society...
.
In 1959, after his retirement from Editorial Plus Ultra, Gaziel moved back to Barcelona, where he resumed on a full-time basis his writing activity. His reappearance, at his 72, in the Catalan literary arena took by surprise the cultural Establishment
The Establishment
The Establishment is a term used to refer to a visible dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation. The term suggests a closed social group which selects its own members...
of Barcelona. Just before his dead, in 1964, he finished off Història de La Vanguardia (1881-1936) (History of La Vanguardia (1881-1936)), a key book in the history of Spanish journalism and Gaziel's personal settling of scores with Carlos Godó.
In October 2009 a new compilation of Gaziel's articles on the First World War, including several ones not collected in the 1915-1917 books, En las trincheras (In the trenches), has been published.
Catalan vs. Spanish and general mind
Gaziel wrote with equal elegance in either CatalanCatalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
or Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
(actually he published eight works in Spanish and fourteen in Catalan, while his almost daily writing in La Vanguardia along twelve years was in Spanish); and while he always saw himself as a genuine Catalan
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
he never fully backed the Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism or Catalanism , is a political movement advocating for either further political autonomy or full independence of Catalonia....
, as he made clear in his posthumous work, Quina mena de gent som (What kind of people we are). Although strictly speaking he did not belong to the Noucentisme
Noucentisme
Noucentisme was a Catalan cultural movement of the early 20th century that originated largely as a reaction against Modernisme, both in art and ideology, and was, simultaneously, a perception of art almost opposite to that of avantgardists...
Catalan cultural movement, he was close to it and always admired Eugeni d'Ors
Eugeni d'Ors
Eugeni d’Ors i Rovira was a Catalan Spanish writer, essayist, journalist, philosopher and art critic...
and, above all, Enric Prat de la Riba
Enric Prat de la Riba
Enric Prat de la Riba i Sarrà was a Catalan politician. He became a member of the Centre Escolar Catalanista, where one of the earliest definitions of Catalan nationalism was formulated....
.
On the other hand, since his youth he was a wholehearted francophile
Francophile
Is a person with a positive predisposition or interest toward the government, culture, history, or people of France. This could include France itself and its history, the French language, French cuisine, literature, etc...
, a stance that was still increased along the rest of his life, although he always deeply regretted the general French ignorance, or disdain, of the French Catalonia history and specificity or even of its mere existence. On the contrary, in the second half of his life he developed a clear socio-cultural, not political, antiamericanism.
All in all, Gaziel was, first and foremost, a liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
, conservative, eurocentric bourgeois, and, like many cultured men of his time, he was well aware of the dramatic, and to them disappointing, changes the world had experienced along the first half of the 20th century, to the point that in Portugal far away he wrote: I am not any more a man of the present times, neither of the future.
