This is a series of—so far—ten apparently independent books but, as I understand it, they make up an ascending column, in an order differing from that in which they appeared and offering a view of Catalan life over a period of almost fifty years. […]

Teresa Pàmies’ first description of part of Catalan life appears in Crònica de la vetlla (Chronicle of the Vigil) where she painstakingly describes life in the town of Balaguer from 1929 to 1932, with interesting snippets about the economy, politics, and social life, shown through specific and clearly identified people. At the start of this period, she was ten years old, and she sold La Batalla, a publication of the Bloc Obrer i Camperol (Workers’ and Peasants’ Bloc) because, at the time, her father was one of the leaders of the organisation. […]

She continues the story in Quan érem capitans (When We Were Captains). Now aged eighteen, she is a leader of the Joventuts Socialistes Unificades de Catalunya (Young Unified Socialists of Catalonia), a position that enables her to make fascinating observations about the atmosphere of the times […]. For any detailed social and political history of our people, memoirs like those of Teresa Pàmies are essential. […] Indeed, such books are often a more valuable source than newspapers. […]

After Quan érem capitans, Teresa Pàmies moves on to [...] Quan érem refugiats (When We Were Refugees), a realist, heartfelt, and well-structured account of exile in France which she alternates with the news of the times, thus situating the reader historically. […] Both of these well-balanced books tell the stories of the same kinds of human beings in different milieus and circumstances. And, in both cases, these milieus and circumstances are described with the same spontaneity and the same passion, just as the characters are spontaneous and passionate and, in some cases, irresponsible to a certain extent, a fact which, now writing as a mature woman, Pàmies makes no attempt to disguise. […]

Va ploure tot el dia (It Rained All Day) is quite a different work. It is now years later. The main character is a young but mature woman with the experience of an intensely lived life, which is not always the case with the characters of the two chronologically preceding novels. […] Whether it comes under the heading of novelised memoirs or not, I would take as the next work Amor clandestí (Clandestine Love) [...]. In this book, one sees Teresa Pàmies’ considerable skills as a writer, greater narrative ability, and a more calculated and successful structure within which alternating scenes, narrated in first and third person, breathe so much life into the story and so smoothly link up some sequences with others that the reader finds it hard to put the book down.

Up to this point, we have six memoirs—or novelised memoirs—which, read in the order I have given them, constitute a history of some lives (the ascending column) in chronological order. Testament a Praga(Testament in Prague) interrupts, at different points, the narrative thread we have with Crònica de la vetlla and Amor clandestí [...]. Another book that interferes with the time line of Pàmies’ chronicle is Gent del meu exili (People of My Exile) where, using anecdotes or with literary portraits, she presents a series of people she has come across in her life. […] Her books Si vas a París, papà (If You Go to Paris, Daddy) and Maig de les dones (The Women’s May) are journalistic impressions of May ’68 in Paris.

One feature of Teresa Pàmies’ writing is her spontaneity and, another, the authenticity, the tone of veracity in her stories which, combined with an absence of literary frills and, even more, her contribution of a large number of vernacular words from her region, are both positive characteristics and singular qualities.

Vicenç Riera Llorca. ‘La crònica novel·lesca de Teresa Pàmies’, Serra d’Or, 212, May 1977.