Aina Villalonga Zaydín (Palma, 1883), a playwright and writer, was notable for her extensive literary production of more than fifty works. Influenced by her family milieu, which included the poet Margalida Caimari, she began to write at the age of twelve. When she was sixteen, she made her debut as a singer and performed in a large number of musical and stage shows.

Her literary production mainly took the form of plays, although she also wrote novels and poetry, as well as translating from Italian and regularly publishing in local newspapers and magazines. As secretary of La Margarita, the women’s section of the Carlist movement, she organised a range of literary activities for charitable purposes. Among her best-known works are Celestina, El rebeinét and Dues doctrines.

As well as her literary activity, Aina Villalonga was actively engaged in charitable work. She founded El Ropero de la Sagrada Família and worked as a Red Cross nurse, which she continued to do during the Civil War. She subsequently became a regional inspector of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Military Medical Corps of the Ministry of the Army.

Web page: Laura Torres Bauzà for AELC.
Documentation and texts: Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica, University of the Balearic Islands Archive.
Translation: Julie Wark.
Press Clippings: Biblioteca Virtual de Prensa Histórica. 
Cover photograph: Gran Enciclopèdia de Mallorca, Nº 18, p. 191.