Ignasi Agustí i Peypoch (Lliçà del Vall, 1913-Barcelona, 1974). He was a novelist, journalist, poet and publisher. He got his start as a writer of poetry, theatre and fiction in Catalan in the 1930s. In 1937, he partnered with Josep Vergés to found the magazine Destino. After the war, he resumed his literary activity, this time in Spanish. One of his most famous works is Mariona Rebull (1943), which is one of the novels within the series entitled La ceniza fue árbol, which tells the story of a Barcelona bourgeois family from the late 19th century until the Spanish Civil War. He directed the Destino publishing house and the Barcelona newspaper Tele/express, and he was one of the creators of the Eugenio Nadal Literary Prize. He also served as the president of the Ateneu Barcelonès from 1962 to 1971.
In 1958, he took over the Argos publishing house-bookshop, where he developed a solid catalogue of titles, including works like Más brillante que mil soles (Brighter than a Thousand Suns) by Robert Jungk, the encyclopaedia Focus, Ciudades en España by Eugenio Nadal and the reissue of his own Mariona Rebull. In 1970, he gave up his ownership of Argos for health reasons. However, as the majority of its shares was owned by the Banco de Madrid, in turn owned by the businessman Jaume Castell, his decision-making power as a publisher and bookseller had already diminished dramatically.
The Biblioteca de Catalunya holds his personal papers, which contain personal handwritten and typed documentation, photographs, awards, sound and audiovisual recordings and printed books.
Ignasi Agustí collection at the Biblioteca de Catalunya
"Ignasi Agustí i la ciutat convulsa" exhibition at the Biblioteca de Catalunya