Antoni Maria Alcover
Antoni Maria Alcover Sureda (Manacor, Balearic Islands, 1862-Palma de Mallorca, 1932) was a religious, modernist writer, teacher, linguist, folklorist and Spanish publicist.
Biography
He was born in Santa Cirga, a farm located between Manacor and Porto Cristo, the son of wealthy farmers. After studying Latin and classical culture, he moved to Palma at the age of fifteen to study at his seminary. Very quickly became known as an uncompromising polemicist, since his tough character[citation required] got him involved in furious polemics.
His literary vocation awoke first in Spanish, and from 1879 in Catalan. From this year he began the task of collecting fables in the colloquial Catalan of Mallorca, which he began to publish in 1880 under the pseudonym "Jordi d'es Racó". The first fable appears in the magazine La Ignorancia. In 1885 he published Contarelles , a retelling of popular theme stories. In 1886 he was ordained a priest. He was vicar of the parish of Manacor, and in 1888 he obtained the chair of Ecclesiastical History of the Seminary. Later he would become vicar general and canon of the See of Mallorca.
In 1906, at his initiative, and under his presidency, the First International Congress of the Catalan Language was held. When the Philological Section of the Institute of Catalan Studies was established, he was appointed president. Due to the fierce dispute that he had with the members of the Institute, this relationship ended soon.
His magnum opus was the Catalan Valencian Balearic Dictionary, which he did not see finished, and which was finished by his collaborator Francesc de Borja Moll.
Strongly opposed to Pompeu Fabra over his grammar, Alcover went so far as to affirm that Fabra had been one of the most disastrous grammarians the Catalan language had ever had, that he had tried to impose an exotic spelling and that he had created a state of violence among Catalan scholars, turning the language into a banner of separatism and hatred against Spain.
Among others, he held the position of correspondent for the Barcelona Academy of Good Letters and maintainer of the Barcelona Floral Games.
In politics he was one of the main promoters of the fundamentalist party in Mallorca. He initially supported the Catalan Solidarity autonomy movement. However, after his intense fight with the Institute of Catalan Studies and the Regionalist League towards the end of the 1910s, he opposed political Catalanism and became a Maurista.
Work
His literary production, aimed at linguistic research, history, the description of popular customs, the collection of folkloric materials, when it is not dedicated to controversy, is of few artifice, prose without aesthetic will, it is reduced to the Compilation of Rondallas Mallorquinas by Jordi des Racó, some biographies, such as the Abbreviated Life of Santa Catalina Tomassa, a costumbrista novel (Arnau), and diaries from his travels.
He was the promoter of the Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balears, a lexicographical work that includes the whole of the Catalan lexicon in all dialects and all periods.