Jaume Miravitlles and marxism : a twentieth-century voyage

This article examines the political career of writer and journalist Jaume Miravitlles i Navarra (Figueres, 1906 - Barcelona, 1988). It proposes that the importance of his contributions to intellectual thought and politics deserve reassessment, partly because Miravitlles's political progress was typical of certain left-wing European intellectuals during the period in discussion: of those whose initiation in politics was full-blooded Leninism, but who then progressively distanced themselves from Soviet ideology and finally became profoundly critical of political Marxism. Miravitlles played a leading role in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, when he headed the Generalitat's Propaganda Commissariat. After 1939, in exile, he became one of the leading narrators of human experience during this period of war and revolution, a role that he reaffirmed on his return to Catalonia in 1963.