Cecília A. Màntua (Barcelona, 1905-1974) was a journalist, novelist, playwright, and publicist. 

As a young woman, she worked for several film magazines as well as with the companies RKO Pictures and Paramount. She wrote the script for the film Sinfonía del hogar (1947), which was directed by Ignasi F. Iquino.

As a young woman she began to work in the domain of radio, and her plays and scripts for the Ràdio Barcelona radio-theatre sessions were very popular among listeners in the 1940s and 1950s. Her first success was Ha passat una oreneta (1936), which was directed by Adrià Gual. After some plays in Spanish in the early years after the Civil War, her resoundingly successful work La Pepa maca (1954) went from radio into Barcelona’s commercial theatres, as did most of her subsequent works, among them La cinglera de la mort (1955), La cançó de la florista (1958), and Princesa de Barcelona (1959). Her plays are mostly about themes of folklore and local customs and manners.

She also wrote the lyrics for several musical shows that were performed in the theatres of Barcelona’s Paral·lel and published several novels on melodramatic and sentimental matters, as well as two books of advice for women, El libro de la mujer (1946) and El libro de la belleza (1955).

Web page: Francesc Viñas for AELC.
Cover photograph: Iquino (portrait on the cover of Ha passat una oreneta, in 1936).
Biography photographs: MAE. Institut del Teatre.
Translation by Julie Wark.