Ramon Llull awards honour Roser Bru foundation, translators and language advocate

The Fundación Roser Bru received the Ramon Llull prize for the international promotion of Catalan creation, a €4,000 award recognising its work to preserve and disseminate the artistic legacy of Roser Bru (Barcelona, 1923–Santiago de Chile, 2021). Created in 2018 by the artist and her family, the foundation holds the largest collection of Bru’s paintings, prints and archival material and has organised exhibitions in Chile and Catalonia, including a major retrospective at the Museu d’Art de Girona. The jury highlighted the foundation’s cataloguing efforts and its role in bringing Bru’s work to wider audiences after her exile to Chile in 1939 aboard the Winnipeg.

The Ramon Llull lifetime achievement prize in literary translation, endowed with €6,000, was awarded to Greek philologist and translator Maria Khatziemmanuïl. A specialist in theatre translation, she has translated about 145 plays from Catalan, Spanish and Latin American theatre into Greek, including more than fifty works directly from Catalan by authors such as Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Marta Buchaca, Sergi Belbel and Lluïsa Cunillé. Since 2012 she has served as artistic director of the Ibero‑American Festival of Dramatized Readings in Athens, produced in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes, which has introduced numerous contemporary Catalan plays to Greek audiences. The jury noted her central role in promoting Catalan theatre in Greece; her career has been recognised with multiple Eurodram awards and Spanish state honours.

The prize for the best literary translation from Catalan, worth €4,000, went to Italian translator Tiziana Camerani for her Italian edition of Núria Bendicho’s novel Terres mortes, published by Voland as Terre morte. The jury praised Camerani’s handling of the book’s linguistic challenges, saying she successfully preserved the varied registers of the characters and the hypnotic tone of the original. Camerani, a freelance translator since 1999 working from Catalan, French and English into Italian, has concentrated in recent years on promoting contemporary Catalan authors in Italy; the jury highlighted her skill in rendering thirteen distinct monologues that make up Bendicho’s novel.

The Ramon Llull prize in Catalan studies and cultural diversity, endowed with €6,000 and recognising the work of a non‑native contributor to the Catalan‑speaking world, was awarded to William Cisilino, director of the Regional Agency for the Friulian Language. The jury cited his sustained work defending, promoting and valorising minority languages in Italy, his engagement with European language policy and his participation in international networks that align with the promotion of linguistic diversity.

The awards were presented at a ceremony in the historic Radio Andorra building in Encamp, part of the annual International Ramon Llull Awards. The event was presided over by Andorra’s head of government, Xavier Espot, and included speeches by representatives of Catalan‑language territories and a performance by the musical duo Alosa. Officials emphasised the strong moment for Catalan culture and reaffirmed commitments to projecting the language and culture internationally through the Ramon Llull Foundation.

Representatives of the Roser Bru family underlined the foundation’s renewed drive to place Bru’s work in Catalonia and abroad, while winners highlighted the importance of translation and cultural exchange in making minority literatures visible beyond their linguistic borders.