Pilar Burgués

Pilar Burgués Monserrat was born in 1958 in Escaldes-Engordany, Andorra. Her parents, the doctor Lluís Burgués and Carmen Montserrat, came from the Matarranya region on the western edge of Catalonia and Aragon, and had settled in Andorra shortly before her birth after a group of residents led by Dot Martí and Joan Escalé went looking for a general practitioner for Escaldes-Engordany. Both parents had suffered in the Spanish Civil War: her paternal grandfather was shot, and her mother was orphaned young. The family lived on the Plaça Santa Anna, where her father had his surgery and where she played as a child. She had two brothers, Josep and Lluís.

She studied geography and history at the University of Zaragoza, and while a student spent several summers on the archaeological excavations at Sant Vicenç d'Enclar led by Xavier Llovera and Jordi Guillamet.

Back in Andorra she first worked as a teacher, a job she said she did not enjoy. In 1983 she joined the National Library of Andorra, where she worked until 2012. In 1996 she became responsible for the library's bibliographic collection, then housed at Casa Bauró. She was the driving force behind the bibliographic review Ex-libris Casa Bauró. Fulls de bibliografia and the catalogue of publications of the Government of Andorra, works that became standard references. She also wrote articles for publications including l'Església de les Valls and the Annals de l'Institut d'Estudis Andorrans.

Her first stories appeared in the autumn of 2012 in the review Portella. Andorra, lletres, arts. Their reception encouraged her to publish the full series as Flaixos de llum blanca (Editorial Andorra, 2015), 34 autobiographical micro stories written between 2011 and 2014 and illustrated by Berta Oromí, in which she wrote frankly about illness, a transplant and life in a wheelchair. Vacances de xics (2018), illustrated by Sergi Mas, turned to memories of her childhood. Her third book, Ametlles torrades (2026), illustrated again by Berta Oromí and presented around Sant Jordi, collected twenty stories first published every two months in the newspaper Bondia and was her first move into fiction. She was awarded the Agora Cultura prize in 2022 for her contribution to Andorran culture.

Burgués was married to the Andorran writer Joan Peruga, and the two often joked that they shared opinions and weak pronouns. She lived with diabetes from a young age. In 2005 she had the toes of both feet amputated, and a few years later she became the first person in Andorra to have a double pancreas and kidney transplant. Her illness lasted about 25 years, and Peruga drew on his experience as her carer in his 2025 book Sentinella, written to recognise the role of carers. She often said that for her, writing was like a pastime.

Pilar Burgués died in hospital on Saturday 24 October 2026, aged 67, according to Andorran media, with her death announced by the Peruga Burgués family. The cause of death was not made public. Her wake was held on Sunday 25 October at the national funeral home, followed that afternoon by a funeral mass at the church of Sant Esteve in Andorra la Vella. Messages of condolence were published by members of Andorra's cultural community.

Burgués left a dual legacy in Andorra: the bibliographic tools she built at the National Library, which remain reference works on the country's publishing, and three books of short prose valued for their precision, delicacy and honesty about illness. Flaixos de llum blanca in particular gave Andorran readers an unflinching first-person account of chronic illness and transplantation.