Jesús Massip i Fonollosa (Roquetes, 1927 - La Garriga, 2021), director of the Historic Archive of the Tortosa Museum (1960-1992), had a PhD in Law and was a researcher, history teacher, and poet.

In his work as director of the Tortosa Archive, he also engaged in a major research project of historical documentation, mainly with regard to compiling laws of the thirteenth-century Costums de Tortosa. In this work he contributed some highly valuable findings, among them a fourteenth-century manuscript of Costums, about which he produced a critical edition.

In his creative activity, he was founder, together with Gerard Vergés, of the literary magazine Geminis (1952-1961), an initiative of cultural resistance in severely repressive times. He also published several collections of poems—Llibre d’hores (1989), Cendra vivent (2002), La terra encesa (2012), Bíbliques (2017), and Personatges / Paisatges (2020)—in which admiration for the landscape around him and memory are central themes and where, among other poetic forms, he notably worked with the tanka. These collections are illustrated volumes, especially by the painter and engraver Frederic Mauri.

In 1988, he was awarded the Carulla Foundation Jaume I Award for civic activity, in 2014, the Joan Martí i Miralles Prize of the Tortosa College of Lawyers, and in 2015, the prestigious Creu de Sant Jordi (St George Cross).

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

Web page: Irene Zurrón Servera for AELC.
Portal photograph: Teresa Sanz / AELC (2005).
Biography photographs: Massip family files.
Translation: Julie Wark.