Maria Lluïsa Algarra i Coma (Barcelona, 1916 - Mexico, 1957) was a playwright, scriptwriter, journalist, and judge. 

She studied Law at the republican and autonomous university and, in 1936, and was appointed by Catalan Government Minister for Justice and Law, Andreu Nin, as a judge in Granollers, the first woman judge in Catalonia and Spain.

She wrote articles on legal matters in the form of dialogues for the Catalan press and, in 1937, participated in the First National Women’s Congress with a speech titled “Demands Won by Women in the Antifascist Struggle”.

In 1935, she wrote her only play in Catalan, a prize-winning work called Judith, which was performed by the Enric Borràs company in the Poliorama Theatre of Barcelona. Exile, first in France and then in Mexico, interrupted her career as a writer, which she renewed in the 1940s, in Mexico City where her plays, including Primavera inútil and Los años de prueba were performed to great acclaim. She also wrote radio and film scripts.

 

Web page: Francesc Viñas for the Association of Catalan Language Writers (AELC).
Photograph: Historical Archive of the City of Barcelona (published in the newspaper La Publicitat, on 5 December 1936).
Documentation: Laia Batlle Gallegos: La producció literària de Maria Lluïsa Algarra i Coma (1916-1957), la primera jutgessa a l’estat espanyol. Bellaterra: Universitat de Barcelona, 2024.
Translation: Julie Wark.