Four books to know Concha Alós, much more than the ex of Baltasar Porcel

PalmaConcha Alós is the only person who has won the Planeta prize twice and, even so, both her figure and her works still await justice. Although the first time, with The Dwarfs (1962), the prize was challenged because Plaza & Janés claimed the rights to it –Alós had submitted the manuscript to the publisher and at first they rejected it for having ideas that were too socialist–, two years later she officially won it with The Bonfires (1964).

Unlike her contemporaries –Carmen Martín Gaite or Camilo José Cela–, her work was on the verge of ending up in oblivion and she, buried in a mass grave in Barcelona, after living in Palma and being born in Valencia. As happens with female figures, her trajectory has been linked to her personal life, as the ex-partner of Baltasar Porcel, and belittled for being a feminist.

Although Alós only published in Spanish, her biographer, Amparo Ayora, asserts that she used Catalan in her day-to-day life. “She considered that she did not have enough training to write in Catalan, but she did translations from one language to the other,” she points out. Likewise, when she worked as a teacher in the 50s in Can Picafort and Santa Maria “she had to teach classes in Catalan, in a mixture of dialects, because the poor children did not understand any Spanish at all.” Ayora's research will be published this autumn in book format with the title Las ciudades de Concha Alós, with the Valencian publisher Vincle.

'The Dwarfs' (1962)Compared with The Beehive, by Camilo José Cela, and intended to be titled The Rats, it is the first novel with which Alós won the Planeta. In this story, the writer creates a social portrait of Francoism through the descriptions of the characters who frequented the Pensión Eloísa, where she stayed upon arriving in Barcelona.

'The Bonfires' (1964)It was the novel with which she officially won the Planeta prize. Set in Son Bauló, it has characters that invite one to see the story as an autobiographical portrait: an intellectual husband who does not satisfy his wife and a protagonist obsessed with fashion magazines who wants to escape her marriage.

'The Red Horse' (1966)Along with The Madame (1969), this novel belongs to the cycle of books she published about the Civil War. It portrays her childhood and adolescence in Castelló, and she becomes one of the first authors to write about the conflict, based on a universal story: that of the refugees forced to leave with only their memories.

'King of Cats. Anthropophagous Narratives' (1972)It marks a stage of new narrative techniques, which also includes Electra Speaks to You (1975) and Argeo Is Dead, I Suppose (1982). It is a collection of short stories that represented an aesthetic breakthrough for her and where she opens up to the world of fantasy. The psychoanalytic burden that begins to form part of her work is reflected in this book, with an almost psychedelic prose.