Rosa Maria Arquimbau (Barcelona, 1909 - 1992) was a writer, journalist, and activist.

In 1924 she began to write for the magazine Joventut Catalana using the pseudonym Rosa de Sant Jordi. After 1926 she wrote for the weekly Dona catalana and, in 1927, she also began to write for Flames Noves, a magazine for young intellectuals of Catalonia. After 1930 she wrote in the regular column “Film & soda” of the newspaper La Rambla.

She is author of the novels Al marge (1933), Història d’una noia i vint braçalets (1934), La pau és un interval (1970), and Quaranta anys perduts (1971), as well as the short story collections Tres contes breus (1928), La dona dels ulls que parlaven i altres contes (1930), and Home i dona (1936). She also wrote for the stage with comedies like Es rifa un home! (1935), which was published in the review La Escena Catalana, the unpublished play (co-authored with Josep Maria Poblet) Estimat Mohamed, and L’inconvenient de dir-se Martines, which was a finalist for the 1957 Joan Santamaria Prize.

In her usually plain, direct style, Rosa Maria Arquimbau’s work presents life and the society of her times from the perspective of her very free views on amorous relationships and femininity.
 

Web page: Toni Terrades for AELC.
Documentation: L’enigma Arquimbau. Sexe, feminisme i literatura a l’era del flirt, by Julià Guillamon. Barcelona: Comanegra, 2015.
Photographs: © Gabriel Casas i Galobardes and L’enigma Arquimbau. Sexe, feminisme i literatura a l’era del flirt. Barcelona: Comanegra, 2015.