Enric Cirici i Delgado

Enric Cirici i Delgado was born in Barcelona in 1931. He trained as a chemical engineer and also obtained a diploma in European studies. His professional career was spent in business in the international paper sector.

Cirici belonged to a generation of young Catalans who challenged the Franco regime through civic and cultural action. He was involved in the Galinsoga affair, the campaign against the La Vanguardia editor Luis Martínez de Galinsoga, and in the Palau de la Música events of 1960, and later took part in the campaign known as Volem bisbes catalans, which called for Catalan bishops in Catalonia.

In 1961 he was one of the founders of Edigsa, the record label whose releases launched the Nova Cançó and modern popular music in Catalan. He sat on its board alongside Salvador Casanovas, Paco Carbó, Josep Espar i Ticó and Josep Maria Macip, and looked after the business side. In a 2022 interview with Enderrock he said the company never paid its partners a dividend and that they had to put in money every year, but that through the song movement Catalan society was set alight. He was also a promoter of the Ona bookshop.

Convinced that a Catalan language press was indispensable, he worked with Josep Espar i Ticó and others for more than a decade to launch a daily newspaper. He recalled travelling from town to town, often through progressive parish priests, to sign up the small investors whose contributions financed the project, and his contacts with Basque printing firms helped get the paper printed. When Avui went on sale on 23 April 1976, the first Catalan language daily since 1939, he found himself, as he put it, almost by accident at the head of its publishing company.

Cirici was married to Maria Josefa Amell i Comas. After retiring from business he began writing about the experiences of his youth. His books include the novel Raquel (2000), La generació dels Fets del Palau (2001), Cançons per a un temps de silenci (2002), a study of the Nova Cançó as a social phenomenon, and Els nens que van viure la guerra (2010). He was a member of the board of the Ateneu Barcelonès, where he started the Cruïlla de debat discussion group.

Enric Cirici died at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona on 27 October 2026, aged 95. His death was reported by El Punt Avui, the successor to the newspaper he helped found, in an obituary by Saül Gordillo describing him as the man who made Avui possible and helped keep it alive. The cause of death was not made public.

Cirici is remembered as one of the businessmen and organisers behind the cultural infrastructure of Catalan resistance to the dictatorship: the Edigsa record label, the Ona bookshop and the Avui newspaper. In the fiftieth anniversary year of Avui he was described as the last surviving member of the group that had spent more than ten years trying to launch it, and his books remain first hand accounts of that generation.