Àngel Guimerà

Who was Àngel Guimerà?

Àngel Guimerà i Jorge was a Spanish writer, born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, to a Catalan father and a Canary islander mother. At an early age, Guimerà's family moved to Catalonia, where they settled at his father's birthplace, El Vendrell.

Guimerà wrote a number of popular plays, which were translated into other languages and performed abroad, proving instrumental in the revival of Catalan language as a literary language in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By far, the most famous was his realistic drama Terra baixa. Written in 1896, it quickly became an international sensation. The play was translated into 15 different languages and the Spanish translation was presented regularly for a period of thirty years by Enric Borràs's theatre throughout Spain and Latin America. In English, the play received three Broadway productions between 1903 and 1936.

In addition to being a popular stage play, Terra baixa was made into six films, including a silent film in the United States, entitled "Martha of the Lowlands" and Leni Riefenstahl's Tiefland.