- 20 January 1999 in Asunción

Asunción

Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...

, Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

) was a Spanish

Spanish people

The Spanish are citizens of the Kingdom of Spain. Within Spain, there are also a number of vigorous nationalisms and regionalisms, reflecting the country's complex history....

 poet, playwright, art critic, painter and journalist.

She received numerous awards and distinctions for her literary work, for defending human rights and the equality between men and woman.

Living the other one that I am that wasn’t what would have been.

Living what would have been dying which I am still not.

Sleeping all was I, another waking I go.

• Nos habremos deseado tanto/ que el beso habrá muerto. Desnudo día, 1936

We wanted each other so bad/ that the kiss would have died. Naked day, 1936

Early life

Josefina Pla was born in Isla de Lobos

Lobos Island

Lobos Island is a small island of the Canary Islands located just 2 km north of the island of Fuerteventura. Politically it belongs to the municipality of La Oliva, on the island of Fuerteventura. It has an area of 4.6 km². It has been a nature reserve without permanent human population...

, Canarias

Canarias

Canarias may mean:* The Spanish Canary Islands * The Canarias class cruiser* The Spanish cruiser Canarias...

, the daughter of Leopoldo Plá and Rafaela Guerra Galvani. She spent her childhood in diverse cities of Spain with her father, a functionary of provinces.

In 1924, she met the Paraguayan artist Andres Campos Cervera in Villajoyosa, Alicante

Alicante

Alicante or Alacant is a city in Spain, the capital of the province of Alicante and of the comarca of Alacantí, in the south of the Valencian Community. It is also a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city of Alicante proper was 334,418, estimated , ranking as the second-largest...

; they married two years later.

Artistic career

In 1925, she went to Paraguay

Paraguay

Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...

 and first established herself in Villa Aurelia and Asunción

Asunción

Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...

. In that same year, she presented her writings in the youth magazine, Speaker of the Writers' Generation of Paraguayan Postmodernism. From there until 1938, she traveled twice to Spain with her husband.

Her husband died in 1937. She came back to Paraguay a year later and headlined with Hérib Campos Cervera

Hérib Campos Cervera

Paraguayan poet Hérib Campos Cervera was born in Asunción, Paraguay, on March 30, 1905, son of Spanish parents, Herib Campos Cervera, also a poet, and of Alicia Diaz Perez, sister of the great intellectual Viriato Díaz Pérez.-Childhood and youth:...

, nephew of her husband.

Throughout her life, she received several awards, gabardines and nominations, including: The Lady of Honour of the Order of Isabel la Católica (1977); the member of the International Ceramic Academy in Ginebra, 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....

; the founding member of the PEN Paraguayan Club; the “Ollantay” trophy to the theatre investigation of Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 (1984); the “woman of the year” in (1977); the Bicentenary Medal of the United States of America (1976); the condition of Counsel of the Vice Minister of the Paraguayan Culture, the National Order of Merit in the commendatory grade of the Paraguayan Government in (1994), her Human Rights defence recognition given by the International Society of Jurist, the Beautiful Arts Gold Medal of Spain (1995), the Johann Gottfried von Herder Medal, member of the Paraguayan Linguistic Academy of Paraguayan and Spanish history, finalist of the Merit Contest for the “Príncipe de Asturias”

Prince of Asturias

Prince of Asturias is the historical title given to the heir to the Spanish throne. It was also the title under the earlier Kingdom of Castile. The current Prince of Asturias is Felipe, son of King Juan Carlos of Spain and Queen Sofía...

 award (1981), the postulation for the “Cervantes award”, top recognition for the Hispanic letters in the years 1989 and 1994, the “Ciudadanía Honoraria” given by the Paraguayan Parliament in 1998, among others.

In the 1950s, she and the Brazilians Joao Rossi and Olga Blinder

Olga Blinder

Olga Blinder , was a Paraguayan painter, engraver and sculptor. She lived through the War of the Chaco, World War II, the Revolution of 1947 and Paraguay's coup d'états in 1954 and 1989....

 of the “New Art Group”.

Pla died on 20 January 1999 in Asuncion

Asunción

Asunción is the capital and largest city of Paraguay.The "Ciudad de Asunción" is an autonomous capital district not part of any department. The metropolitan area, called Gran Asunción, includes the cities of San Lorenzo, Fernando de la Mora, Lambaré, Luque, Mariano Roque Alonso, Ñemby, San...

.

Works

Her work covers the field of literary creation – more than forty titles in poetry, narrative and theatre, the social and cultural history of Paraguay, the ceramic, painting and critic, by which, with justice is considered the highest, fundamental referent in the Paraguayan Cultural Subject in the last century.

Year	Works
1934	“The price of dreams”
1960	“The rooth and dawn”
1965	“Faces in the water” “Death invention”
1966	“Dark Satelites”
1968	“The dust in love” “Naked day”
1975	“Black light”
1927–1977	“Poetic Antology”
1982	“Time foliage”, “Time and darkness”
1984	“Changing dreams for shadows”.
1985	“The flame and sand”. “The thirty thousand absents”.
1996	“The imposible absent”

Her dramatic production includes, since 1927 until 1974, “Víctima propiciatoria”, “Episodios chaqueños” (with Roque Centurión Miranda), “Porasy” (opera script with music of Otakar Platal), “Desheredado”, “La hora de Caín”, “Aquí no ha pasado nada”, “Un sobre en blanco”, “María inmaculada”, “Pater familias” (all with Roque Centurión Miranda), “La humana impaciente”, “Fiesta en el río”, “El edificio”, “De mí que no del tiempo”, “El pretendiente inesperado”, “Historia de un número”, “Esta es la casa que Juana construyó”, “La cocina de las sombras”, “El professor”, “El pan del avaro”, “El rey que rabió” y “El hombre de oro” (the last three, are children pieces), “La tercera huella dactilar”, “Media docena de grotescos brevísimos”, “Las ocho sobre el mar”, “Hermano Francisco”, “Momentos estelares de la mujer (short pieces series)”, “Don Quijote y los Galeotes”, “El hombre en la cruz”, “El empleo” y “Alcestes”.

Her piece about Cultural and Social Paraguayan History includes the following titles: “La cultura paraguaya y el libro”, “Literatura paraguaya del Siglo XX”, “Apuntes para una historia de la cultura paraguaya”, “Arte actual en el Paraguay”, “Cuatro siglos de teatro en el Paraguay”, “Impacto de la cultura de las Reducciones en lo Nacional”, “Apuntes para una aproximación a la Imaginería Paraguaya”, “El Templo de Yaguarón”, “El barroco hispano-guaraní”, “Las artesanías en el Paraguay”, “Ñandutí. Encrucijada de dos mundos”, “El espíritu del fuego”, “El libro en la época colonial”, “Bilingüismo y tercera lengua en el Paraguay”, “Españoles en la cultura del Paraguay”, “La mujer en la plástica paraguaya” and "The British in Paraguay, 1850 - 1870" (translated by B.C. McDermot).