Josep San Martín Boncompte (Lleida, 1947) has been associated with the Franja de Ponent region for the last thirty years, working as a Spanish teacher in a secondary school in Fraga until his retirement in 2008. He has been an active member of movements for educational renovation and has published several books on his experiences as a teacher. In 1986 he was awarded the CIDE (Centre for Educational Research and Documentation) National Prize for Educational Renovation.

He has also received a number of literary awards, including the 1990 Andorra Literary Night "Sant Carles Borromeu Prize" for Short Stories and Fiction, and the 1999 "Guillem Nicolau" Prize for the collection of poems titled Reculls d'incerta vida (Collections of Uncertain Life).

He has also written several novels, among them Joan Majoles (1994) and Crònica d'un crepuscle (Chronicle of a Crepuscule, 2000), both of which have been well-received by critics and readers alike.

Moreover, he has published a book called Memòria d'exilis i retorns (A Memoir of Exiles and Returns), in which he probes the terrain of recovery of historic memory, an issue to which he is particularly sensitive as a member of the "l'Amical de Mauthausen" (Mauthausen Association) and relative of deportees. Again, he has written for a number of periodical publications, for example Temps de Franja.

He is a member of the Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana (Association of Catalan Language Writers).



Web page: Carme Ros for AELC.
Documentation and photography: Author's personal files.
Translation: Julie Wark.