José María Gironella

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José María Gironella Pous, known in Catalan as Josep Maria Gironella i Pous (31 December 1917 in Darnius – 3 January 2003 in Arenys de Mar) was a Catalonian Spanish author best known for his fictional work The Cypresses Believe in God (Los cipreses creen en Dios), which was published in Spain in 1953 and translated into English in 1955 by Harriet de Onís (1899-1969), a translator who usually specialized in Latin-American fiction.

Biography

Born on December 31, 1917, in Darnius, Girona. From a humble family, he studied in a seminary between the ages of 10 and 12, and worked in different jobs (drugstore clerk, liquor factory worker, bank clerk, etc.). He was a member of the Federation of Young Christians of Catalonia.^[1] At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, he fled the republican territory in France and entered the Franco zone to join Franco's army, specifically the Terç de Requetès de la Mare de Déu de Montserrat. In December 1936 he joined the Military Information and Police Service (SIPM) in the area of Pallars and the Aran Valley, and carried out smuggling operations. Upon being discovered, he was imprisoned in Figueres in 1940.^[1] In 1946 he married Magdalena Castanyer, and published his first book of poetry, Ha llegado el invierno y tú no estás aquí (The Winter has Come and You are not Here). His first mainstream success came that same year when his novel Un hombre (A Man) won the Premi Nedal, a prestigious literary prize in Spain.

Gironella's key work, his trilogy about the Spanish Civil War—Los cipreses creen en Dios (The Cypresses Believe in God), 1953; Un millón de muertos (One Million Dead), 1961; and Ha estallado la paz (The Peace has Burst), 1966—attained remarkable success. Gironella lived in Paris and Helsinki. He died in 2003 due to a cerebral embolism, three days after his 85th birthday, at his home in Arenys de Mar, where he had retired. He was buried in Arenys de Munt cemetery.^[2]

The Cypresses Believe in God

The book is a

While Gironella hated the polarization that led to Civil War, he supported the