Joaquim Amat-Piniella

Joaquim Amat-Piniella (Manresa, 1913 – Barcelona, 1974) fought as an artillery lieutenant in the Spanish Civil War. Exiled in France as of September 1939, he was an inmate of the Argelès and Saint-Cyprien concentration camps before being obliged to enlist in the 109 CTE task force, which was sent as back-up to protect the Maginot Line in December the same year. Under the German occupation, he was taken first to a Frontstalag and, eventually, to Mauthausen in January 1941. He was then in the Ternberg and Redl-Zipf sub-camps, or external commandos, until he was liberated at Ebensee on 6 May 1945. After a brief stay in Paris, he settled in Sant Julià de Lòria (Andorra) where he typed out the 71 poems of Les llunyanies, poemes de l'exili (1940-1946) [Distances, Poems of Exile (1940–1946)] and where he was to write K.L. Reich. After his return to Barcelona in 1948, he published El casino dels senyors [The Gentlemen's Casino] (1956), Roda de solitaries [Circle of the Lonely] (1957) and La pau a casa [Peace at Home] (1959). The publisher Albertí had tried in vain to bring out K.L. Reich, his novel about the camps, despite the purging to which the author himself subjected it in order to get around the censors. Finally, the expurgated edition, presented by Carlos Barral, was published in Spanish in February 1963. Joan Sales published the Catalan version in October the same year. In 1965, the book was awarded the Fastenrath Prize of the Royal Spanish Academy for the best work published since 1963. K.L. Reich is one of the most significant contributions to European concentration camp literature.

The book was written in Sant Julià de Lòria between September 1945 and April 1946 at the same time as the 71 poems of exile were being transcribed, although the latter remained unpublished. K.L. Reich was Amat-Piniella's first contribution as a novelist after the book of biographical sketches titled Ombres al calidoscopi [Shadows in the Kaleidoscope] (1933). It is logical to assume that his intention was to publish the novel because, just after he returned to Barcelona where he was to live out his internal exile since it was impossible for him to return to his hometown of Manresa, he wrote to his friend Agustí Bartra, "These days I have finished the rewriting of the book on the camps" (2 February 1948), even though he was aware of doing it "without much hope of being able to publish it" (ibid.). By letter, Amat highlights something obvious: he would have published the 1946 version, which was corrected by hand in 1948, had circumstances permitted but, unfortunately, the Franco regime and its organs of censorship foiled any attempt to do so. In the 1950s Amat kept blue-pencilling and bowdlerising different fragments of the novel in the hope that his publisher would manage to get permission to bring it out but, as Amat recognises in writing to Joan Sales, "My friend Albertí was denied authorisation by the censors years ago when he presented an expurgated version that had been toned right down in every way" (27 June 1963). Finally, after seventeen years and after he had published several novels, his friend Carlos Barral managed to obtain publishing rights and the Spanish edition finally appeared on 25 February 1963. After that, Joan Sales declined to publish La línea recta [The Straight Line, unpublished] and suggested that he bring out K.L. Reich, an endeavour that eventually bore fruit on 15 October. This edition, the one that was known until the Edicions 62 volume was published, contains a fragment imposed by Joan Sales himself (see David Serrano, 2004: 259) and evidences a serious attempt at interference by Sales who attempted to suppress the final ontological reflections, a problem that Amat was able to rectify and avoid in time. Continue reading...