Pilar Cabot

On 27 September 1940, Cabot was born in Vic, Osona.[1][2] She lived in an cultural climate from an early age and was particularly affectionate for music and theatre fostered by her grandfather, the amateur actor and playwright Josep Subirana i Serra. Cabot accompanied her grandfather to rehearsals at theatres and to discussions with fellow artists. She liked to play a game writing scripts on paper dolls and earned her first literary prize at age 11.[2] She studied philosophy and letters and music.[1] In 1965, Cabot opened the bookstore CLAM in Vic,[3] which was wholly dedicated to Catalan books and records in Osona and Vic in the period of Francoist Spain and the Spanish transition to democracy.[1][2] She kept the store open until 1985.[3] During this time period, Cabot's bookstore was frequented by socialites emphasised books that were banned by censors.[1]

She won the 1983 Osonenca Prize,[4] the 1984 Musa de la Cova del Drac de Barcelona,[1] and the 1987 Festivities Pompeu Fabra de Cantonigròs of Poetry.[5] Cabot authored approximately twenty works of poetry.[3] In 1987, she wrote the poetry collection Avui estimo Baudelaire and the non-fiction prose book Color de vida : Pintora A. Montaner.[5] Two years later, Cabot published Balcó de guaita and then won the Caterina Albert Prize in 1990.[4][5] She authored Ombres de mots i de silencis in 1992 and followed this with the publication of En Pere de les excuses a year later.[5] In 1996, she wrote La plácida mirada de Guerau,[4] and Amb veu d'amic that same year.[5] Cabot published Quan l'absència et visiti the following year,[5] and Setge in 1998.[1] She co-wrote A l'ombra del semàfor with Armand Quintana in 2001;[1] then Els versos obstinats two years later;[4] Àncores o ales? in 2004;[5] El cançoner d'en Marcel in 2011;[4] Marcel-Partitures in 2012 and El niu transparent in 2014.[1]

Cabot was actively involved with the Public Reading Commission of the Joan Triadú Library in Vic as a member from 1996, promoting and organising activities past the library. She established the free-admitting Tertúlies amb poetes occurring every second Saturday of each month during the afternoon in 1997. Cabot was an honorary member of the Catalan Language Writers Association.[2] In 2014, she received recognition at the March of the Vigatans.[1][4]

She was married to the cultural activist and writer Armand Quintana.[3] On the evening of 19 May 2017,[3] Cabot died in Tavèrnoles.[2] She was given a funeral service three days later.[1]

Roser Iborra described Cabot as "a vital woman, full of tireless energy and generosity. A woman who, in the midst of the Franco regime, built a bookshop-refuge in the heart of Vic, full of Catalan books, which was then an unthinkable audacity, with forbidden books hidden where no one would look for them, that is: among others, visible, on the shelves."[6]

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