Mercè Company

Catalonia is a region of northeastern Spain that borders the Mediterranean Sea to its east and France to its north. In 1932, the Second Spanish Republic granted it a Statue of Autonomy. It opposed Generalissimo Francisco Franco's coup d'état against the Republic in 1938 and when he succeeded in seizing power, he revoked the statute and brutally oppressed the Catalans.

This was the environment into which Company was born to Josep Company i Torres, a graphic artist, and his wife in the Catalonian city, Barcelona.{{Cite web |last=((Company)) |first=Mercè |date=2023 |title=Mercè Company, Escriptora |url=https://mercecompany-milfulls.cat/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250315070426/https://mercecompany-milfulls.cat/ |archive-date=2025-03-15 |access-date=2025-05-15 |language=es}}{{Cite web |date=2014-10-16 |title=Josep Company – Un dibuixant oblidat! |url=https://pierredeselenes.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/josep-company-un-dibuixant-oblidat/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141016064438/https://pierredeselenes.wordpress.com/2014/09/10/josep-company-un-dibuixant-oblidat/ |archive-date=2014-10-16 |access-date=2025-05-16 |website= |language=ca}} Catalonia and all of Spain had been ruled by the dictator Franco for nine years when she was born.{{Cite journal |last=Mir i Curcó |first=Conxita |date=2008 |title=The Francoist Repression in the Catalan Countries |url=https://spotlightonpoverty.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/1st-reading.pdf |journal=CATALAN HISTORICAL REVIEW |volume=1 |pages=133-147}} Under his regime, Catalan language, culture and political independence had been violently suppressed. In her childhood printing or publishing books in Catalan was illegal. So was using the language in public in any way. Catalan was only kept alive in verbal conversations at home and in literature published before the Spanish Civil War and kept at home. Adults in the authoritarian world around her routinely hid the truth, either with silence or with lies, and the language of her home was forbidden outside its walls. She told an interviewer in 2008 that this created a world of black outside her family and white within it. She therefore learned to mistrust adults, seeing them as a threat to her freedom as a child.{{Cite thesis |last=Creixans Vendrell |first=Bibiana |title=El realisme crític de Mercè Company a les novel les per a infants i joves: compromís social i exigència literària |date=2008 |access-date=2025-05-15 |degree= |publisher=Open University of Catalonia |url=https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |language=Catalan |page=15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240708024329/https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |archive-date=2024-07-08 |url-status=live}} This theme creeps into many of her works.

Her father's career exposed her to the visual arts and decoration from an early age and she became familiar with them, experimenting with painting and photography. In university she studied fine art and journalism. She met cartoonist and illustrator {{Interlanguage link|Agustí Asensio i Saurí|ca|Agustí Asensio i Saurí}} and married him in 1972.{{Cite web |title=Asen |url=https://humoristan.org/ca/autor/asen |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240915161306/https://humoristan.org/ca/autor/asen |archive-date=2024-09-15 |access-date=2025-05-15 |website=Humoristan, museo digital de 150 años de humor gráfico}} In her early adulthood she worked for newspapers and magazines but she became drawn to literature just when the elderly Franco's regime was crumbling. She felt she could express herself better in Catalan than in Spanish so she decided to write in that language. Her first effort was a 1973 collection of four stories for young children titled Els contes de l’oncle Agus ({{Translation|Tales of Uncle August}}). Her husband illustrated the books and this began a lasting, fruitful creative partnership between them. The books dissatisfied her, though. She felt they were not well-written. Two years later Franco's dictatorship ended with his death and Spain transitioned to democratic rule. The Statute of 1979 returned some autonomy to Catalonia, including removing the ban on the language. Company was able to find the classes she needed to learn to write the language she had heard in her home from birth.{{Cite thesis |last=Creixans Vendrell |first=Bibiana |title=El realisme crític de Mercè Company a les novel les per a infants i joves: compromís social i exigència literària |date=2008 |access-date=2025-05-15 |degree= |publisher=Open University of Catalonia |url=https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |language=Catalan |page=7 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240708024329/https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |archive-date=2024-07-08 |url-status=live}} She left journalism in 1981 to devote herself to all forms of literature except poetry.{{Cite web |title=Mercè Company |url=https://www.escriptors.cat/autors/companym/portic-merce-company |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200831022021/https://www.escriptors.cat/autors/companym/portic-merce-company |archive-date=2020-08-31 |access-date=2025-05-15 |website=Associació d'Escriptors en Llengua Catalana |language=ca}} In 1983 legislation was passed making Catalan and Spanish co-official languages in Catalonia and establishing Catalan as the language to be used in public schools.{{Cite web |last=Argelaguet |first=Jordi |date=2022-01-22 |title=The controversy over language in Catalan schools heats up |url=https://www.centreonconstitutionalch2022-05-16ange.ac.uk/news-and-opinion/controversy-over-language-catalan-schools-heats |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220516044350/https://www.centreonconstitutionalcange.ac.uk/news-and-opinion/controversy-over-language-catalan-schools-heats |archive-date=2022-05-16 |access-date=2025-05-16 |website=Centre on Constitutional Change |language=en}}

This was the backdrop to her busiest period of literary creativity. She wrote illustrated books for small children but also novels for older children and teens and, toward the end of the decade, for adults. Her storybook, Nana Bunilda menja Malsons ({{Translation|Dwarf Bunilda Eats Nightmares}}) was released in 1985 to enthusiastic public and critical reception. She collaborated with Roser Capdevila and Enric Larreula to create the nine books in The Triplets series, which went on to become the Catalan production most widely spread across international and transmedia divides. {{Cite journal |last=Scolari |first=Carlos Alberto |last2=Jiménez |first2=Manel |last3=Guerrero |first3=Mar |date=2012 |title=Narrativas transmediáticas en España: cuatro ficciones en busca de un destino cross-media |trans-title=Transmedia Storytelling in Spain: four fictions searching for their cross-media destiny |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1468773282/fulltextPDF/DDFD72DDA0684A01PQ/3?accountid=196403&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals |journal=Comunicación y Sociedad |language=es |location=Pamplona, Spain |publisher=Universidad de Navarra |volume=25 |issue=1 |pages=137-163 |via=ProQuest}}By 1986 she had written dozens of storybooks for children, almost a dozen novels for preadolescents and two for teens. The second of these, published that year, was called La imbècil ({{Translation|The Idiot}}). That same year she rewrote it into a screenplay for a feature-length film called {{Interlanguage link|Qui t'estima, Babel?|ca|https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qui_t%27estima,_Babel%3F}} ({{Translation|Who loves you, Babel?}}). In 1988 La imbècil chosen as the best in Catalan children's literature by the International Board on Books for Young People as suitable for the international market. In 1989 she also wrote thirteen scripts for the animated television series, Los cuentos de Nana Bunilda ({{Translation|Tales of Dwarf Bunilda}}), then created Ilborn and Company, the production company that produced these as a 13-episode series in 1991. Franco had also suppressed the Galician and Basque languages and Company worked with {{Interlanguage link|Carlos Casares Mouriño|lt=Carlos Casares Mouriño|gl|https://gl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Casares}} to translate some of her stories into Galician to help the effort to reclaim the language.{{Cite journal |last=Luna Alonso |first=Ana |date=2017 |title=Carlos Casares en el espacio francófono: La trayectoria editorial de Monseigneur |trans-title=Carlos Casares in the French-speaking community: The editorial trajectory of Monseigneur |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1988462479/fulltextPDF/DDFD72DDA0684A01PQ/4?accountid=196403&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals |journal=Anales de Filología Francesa |location=Murcia, Spain |publisher=Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Murcia |volume=25 |pages=381-398 |issn=02132958 |via=ProQuest}}

By the early 1990s, she had written one series of storybooks each year for ten years, with an average of eight books per series. She had written 40 more single storybooks, as well as 15 books for older children, five for adolescents and three for adults. Her books were being used in public schools. Company wrote in the style of Catalan she heard people speaking in the streets and she felt the demand for language suitable for use in schools restricted her. She also felt she had written all she could for young children and was concerned about repeating herself so she stopped writing storybooks. She founded Aula de Lletres, Escola de les Arts Escrites, a school for writers, in 1993 and began teaching writing. She and her husband were partners in adapting the animated Los cuentos de Nana Bunilda for television in Japan when he was killed in a traffic accident in Barcelona in 1994. This project was permanently suspended. In 1997 she created la Fundació Agustí Asensio as a nonprofit to foster creativity and communication in his memory.{{Cite web |date=2019-12-05 |title=FUNDACIÓ AGUSTÍ ASENSIO – Treballem per la paraula, la comunicació i la creació |url=https://www.fundacioagustiasensio.org/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191205183107/https://www.fundacioagustiasensio.org/ |archive-date=2019-12-05 |access-date=2025-05-17 |website=web.archive.org}}

Company did not write another storybook, although new editions of previously published books were produced in 2002. She remained, however, creatively active. She collaborated with her daughter Gisela Asensio to write 35 radio scripts for L’hora del vici ({{Translation|The Time of Vice}}) in 1997. In 2005 she adapted her 1985 novel for adults, La Presència ({{Translation|The Presence}}), for a theatrical production which was directed by her daughter Nona.{{Cite web |title=El Teatre municipal acull l'estrena de 'La presència', de Mercè Company i Carlos Peramo, sota la direcció de Nona Asensio |url=https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/961919/20050219/teatre-municipal-acull-lestrena-presencia-merce-company-carlos-peramo-sota-direccio-nona-asensio.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180101225038/https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticia/961919/20050219/teatre-municipal-acull-lestrena-presencia-merce-company-carlos-peramo-sota-direccio-nona-asensio.html |archive-date=2018-01-01 |access-date=2025-05-17 |website=VilaWeb |language=ca}} The following year she wrote the play Càsting de fantasmes ({{Translation|Casting Ghosts}}) which again was directed by her daughter Nona.{{Cite web |title=OBRAS DIRIGIDAS POR NONA ASENSIO |url=https://grupcharlytrama.com/nonaasensio/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/09/OBRAS-DIRIGIDAS-POR-NONA-ASENSIO.pdf |url-status=live |archive-url=http://archive.today/2025.05.17-215544/https://grupcharlytrama.com/nonaasensio/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2024/09/OBRAS-DIRIGIDAS-POR-NONA-ASENSIO.pdf |archive-date=2025-05-17}} The pair repeated the same collaboration to bring La rateta que escombrava l’escaleta ({{Translation|The Rat that Swept the Stairs}}) to the stage in 2009 and again in 2010. Two years later they joined together again to bring Nana Bunilda menja malsons to the stage at the {{Interlanguage link|Mercat de les Flores|lt=Mercat de les Flores|ca|https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercat_de_les_Flors}} during the Festival del Grec.

She also wrote several novels for adults in the first two decades of the twenty-first century and stated, in May of 2023, that she was in the last stages of writing a novel for adults she had first conceived of in 1996.{{Cite web |last=((Company)) |first=Mercè |title=Segona Etapa |url=https://mercecompany-milfulls.cat/?page_id=24 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20241011111733/https://mercecompany-milfulls.cat/?page_id=24/#sense_limits |archive-date=2024-10-11 |access-date=2025-05-17 |language=es}}

She called herself a painter in words and was highly collaborative in the way she worked with illustrators. She would first create notes and a story outline and hand that off to the artist. Once they had created the illustrations she would fill in the tale's details in a way that made the images integral to the work.{{Cite thesis |last=Creixans Vendrell |first=Bibiana |title=El realisme crític de Mercè Company a les novel les per a infants i joves: compromís social i exigència literària |date=2008 |access-date=2025-05-15 |degree= |publisher=Open University of Catalonia |url=https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |language=Catalan |page=13 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240708024329/https://openaccess.uoc.edu/handle/10609/133766 |archive-date=2024-07-08 |url-status=live}} She wrote in an era when authors picked up themes never written about before and had imperfect major characters like her La imbècil and El germá gran.{{Cite book |last=Surrallés |first=Carmen Garcia |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2137949896/citation/C95F82ADA9EA4B80PQ/10?accountid=196403&sourcetype=Books |title=International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature |last2=Verdulla |first2=Antonio Moreno |date=2004 |publisher=Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |location=Abingdon, UK |chapter=107. Spain (Part V: National and international) |url-access=subscription |via=ProQuest}}{{Cite journal |last=Selfa Sastre |first=Moisés |last2=López Gaseni |first2=José Manuel |date= |year=2020 |title=La narrativa infantil y juvenil escrita en catalán y euskera (1975-1990): caracterización, convergencias y divergencias |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/2501304713/28C4D0594A2F47A4PQ/3?accountid=196403&sourcetype=Scholarly%20Journals |journal=Didáctica : Lengua y Literatura |language=es |location=Madrid, Spain |publisher=Universidad Complutense de Madrid |volume=32 |pages=13-27 |url-access=subscription |via=ProQuest}} Her works, especially those for children, do not shy away from harsh topics like suicide, abandonment, poverty and abuse. She has said that her experience growing up in a society suffocated under the Franco dictatorship caused her to mistrust adults and this is reflected in her work.

Company married Agustí Asensio i Saurí in 1972. They had two daughters, Gisela and Nona. Agustí died in a traffic accident in their Barcelona neighborhood in 1994. Nona Asensio i Company is a theatrical director. Gisela ran the Fundació Augustí Asensio.

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Category:1947 births

Category:Living people

Category:Women writers from Catalonia

Category:Spanish writers in French

Category:Spanish children's writers

Category:Spanish women children's writers