Paulina Pi de la Serra i Joly (Terrassa, 1906-1991) was a cultural activist, politician, teacher, writer, and radio broadcaster.

In 1933, she was named president of the Terrassa delegation to the Regionalist League of Catalonia political party and was a member of the editorial board of its weekly publication, Després. The following year she was the League delegate to the Congress of Organised European National Groups in Berne. Paulina Pi de la Serra was an especially gifted orator, which earned her the nickname “nightingale of the League”.

When the Civil War broke out, Pi de la Serra, who was in Geneva attending a League of Nations summer course, went to Rome, then to Perpignan, and finally moved to Paris, where she worked for several years as a translator and teacher, and in various areas of the Francoist Propaganda and Press Office.

In 1945, she settled in Terrassa, where she became involved in the city’s cultural life. Her commitment to the city is clearly expressed in her chronicle L'ambient cultural a Terrassa, 1877-1977, which was published in 1978. In the 1970s, she worked with the radio stations Ràdio Terrassa and Cadena Catalana, and a selection of her broadcasts is collected in the cassette A corre-cuita (1983). In 1982, she published her only literary work, Quatre narracions, which brings together stories written at different times of her life, two of which had previously been published in magazines.

Web page: Irene Zurrón Servera for AELC (Association of Catalan Language Writers).
Photographs: Terrassa Municipal Archive.
Translated by Julie Wark.