Caterina Albert (1869-1966), born in l’Escala, was a lady of great artisitic sensitivity who spent most of her life in the little town where she lived and had to spend a great number of years at the end of her life ill in bed. Solitude (in Catalan, Solitud) is now a novel a hundred years old, but one that has lost none of its relevance.

Written under a masculine pseudonym (‘Víctor Català’) for obvious reasons of time and place, Solitude was published in instalments in the journal Joventut between May 1904 and April 1905. This work undoubtedly constitutes the starting-point in modern Catalan literature of the exploration of the female identity by a female writer.