Bernat Cifre Forteza (Pollença, 1935-2021). Poet, prose writer, essayist, and secondary school Latin teacher.

After completing his primary and secondary education in his hometown, he spent some years at the Conciliar Seminary in Palma, Mallorca, and studied Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona. He taught Latin in secondary schools of Manises, Granollers, and the Ramon Llull school in Palma, where he engaged in intensive cultural activity that he subsequently continued in Pollença.

In his mature years, he began to write poetry that was clearly influenced by the poet Miquel Costa i Llobera, and by the Mallorca School in general. Metrics and traditional versification structure a good part of his poems in collections which include Sistema decimal (1989), S'encalcen les verdors saltant per les marjades (1996), and La força del torrent: selecció de sonets (2017). Landscaping becomes a symbol of human virtues, as he finds in Costa i Llobera's poem "Lo pi de Formentor" to which he devoted an introductory study. His poetic prose, published in the two volumes of Geografia lírica, is along similar lines.

Notable in his work as an essayist, and fruit of his doctoral thesis, is his most significant work, Costa i Llobera i el món classic (1854-1922), in which he studies the work of Costa i Llobera and formally analyses his poems, especially "Horacianes" and "La deixa del geni grec".

He was an Honorary member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (AELC – Association of Catalan Language Writers).

Web page: Francesc Viñas per a l'AELC. 
Photographs: AELC (Lletres i Memòria).
Translation: Julie Wark.