• Direct: last minute of the coronavirus

The playwright Josep Maria Benet i Jornet died this Monday in a residence in Lleida due to the coronavirus. He will be cremated this Wednesday in a private ceremony and later, when the confinement is lifted, a "party" will be held in his honor in Barcelona. This was explained by the playwright's daughter, Carla Benet, in statements to Europa Press. "The idea is to throw a party to celebrate his life, not a funeral. It is not what my father would want . " Benet i Jonet has had Alzheimer's disease since 2015.

He who was one of the most hyperactive and popular authors on the Catalan scene and television was born in 1940 in a small flat on the Ronda de Sant Antoni in Barcelona, ​​studied at the Piarists and enrolled in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona , where he came into contact with the anti-Franco struggle and began to know Catalan literature. In 1962 he enrolled at the Escola d'art dramàtic Adrià Gual, which would mark his destiny: there he came into contact with Ricard Salvat, Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Josep Montanyès, Fabià Puigserver, Francesc Nel·lo and other personalities from the world of theater. A year later, in 1963, he won the Josep M. de Sagarra Theater Prize for his first play, Una vella, coneguda olor.

His first play was something like the Catalan equivalent to Buero Vallejo's classic Historia de una escala and somehow marked the beginning of contemporary Catalan theater under Franco . Critic Maria José Ragué-Arias wrote the following when in 2011 the text, directed by Sergi Belbel, was recovered to open the season of the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. " A candle, with a strong smell , offers us a piece of life, very authentic, from a neighborhood patio in a Barcelona neighborhood, El Raval, in which the author lived until he was forty, a neighborhood that he knew perfectly and those of us who already have a age, we can identify in their pettiness, smallness, disappointments, their little illusions, their bland lives.It is a realistic and identifiable picture, with its religious nonsense , its life attached to radio series, sentimental offices, envy, gossip and junkyards . "

That debut in style was followed by Fantasia per un auxiliar administratiu, Cançons perdudes and a long list of realistic works that reflected the death throes of Francoism such as Berenàveu a les fosques, Quan la parlava parlava de Franco and Revolta de bruixes . In 1989 Ai, carai! at the Teatre Lliure, followed by Desig, ER (adapted to the cinema by Ventura Pons), Olors, Això, a fill, no se li fa, L'habitació del nen, Salamandra, Dones que ballen and Com dir-ho ?

If Benet i Jornet, better known as Papitu , was known for anything, it was because he was a tireless worker. According to the SGAE, of which he was a member since he wrote his first play in the 1960s, the playwright had 117 plays on his record and a whopping 4,493 episodes from television series . In 2016 he was awarded the entity's Medal of Honor. The list of distinctions that it accumulated includes the National Theater Prize, La Creu de Sant Jordi , the National Prize for Literature, the Max de Honor and the Prize dHonor de les Lletres Catalanes.

Apart from the theater, Benet i Jornet was one of the main locomotives for the Catalan public television soap operas during the golden age , followed fervently by hundreds of thousands of spectators. The seminal Poblenou and its spin off Rosa, Nissaga de Power, Laberint d'ombres, El cor de la Ciutat, Vendelplà and Zoo are some of his creations. On Televisión Española, he was part of the screenwriting team for Amar en rebellious times and La Señora . He was the founder, along with Joan Bas i Jaume Banacolocha, of Diagonal TV.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Alzheimer
  • Barcelona
  • SGAE
  • theater
  • Covid 19
  • Coronavirus

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