page_title: Domingo Cirici Ventalló
section_title: Family and youth
hierarchical_section_title: Domingo Cirici Ventalló / Family and youth
caption_attribution_description: Català: Postal de les esglésies de Sant Pere de Terrassa
context_page_description: Domingo Cirici Ventalló was a Spanish novelist, editor and political militant. During his lifetime he gained wide popularity as author of 4 novels; currently classified as political fiction or dystopian prose, they are considered second-rate literature. His best known work La República española en 1.91... fairly accurately predicted the advent of the Republic, its sectarian politics, collapse of public order and the ensuing military coup. As a journalist Cirici contributed to some 30 Conservative and Catholic dailies, but is best known as editor-in-chief of El Correo Español and briefly the key author of El Debate. Politically Cirici remained a Carlist; he advanced the Traditionalist outlook both in his novels and in his press work, though he did not hold any post in the party and his attempts to obtain a seat in the Cortes ended in failure.
context_section_description: There is little known about paternal ascendants of Cirici Ventalló; the Cirici family has not been recorded until the 19th century, when some of its representatives were noted in Northern Catalonia. The father of Domingo, Matías Cirici Traver (1837–1912), originated from Seu d'urgell. It is not clear what he was doing for a living; in later official documents he was recorded as "propietario". In 1875 he married Vicenta Ventalló Vintró, descendant to a prestigious local family. Her father and the maternal grandfather of Cirici Ventalló, Domingo Ventalló Llobateras (1805–1878), was a Terrassa pharmacist and served as alcalde of the town, the role performed at the turn of the centuries also by one of his sons. Author of a few works on hydrology, Ventalló Llobateras was also the leader of local conservative Catholics.
  The newly wed Matías and Vicenta settled in Terrassa, though either in the late 1880s or early 1890s they moved to Barcelona. They had 6 children, 3 daughters and 3 sons. Domingo was raised in a pious Catholic ambience and educated in Real Colegio Tarrasense, an establishment catering to local bourgeoisie. None of the sources consulted indicates whether he entered a university or graduated; since his early teens he contributed to local periodicals and when in 1897 he settled on his own in Barcelona it was because he commenced professional career as a journalist. Cirici Ventalló got married in 1900 at an unusually early age of 22. The bride, María de la Concepción Babé Botana (1882–1971), was even younger; almost nothing is known about her family or herself, except that she has outlived her husband by 54 years.
  Domingo and Concepción settled in Barcelona. They had 5 children, born between 1903 and 1916: Matías, Domingo, Carmen, Ana and Francisco; Ana died at the age of 5 in 1921. Matías Cirici Babé earned his name as a screenwriter contributing to Hollywood films of the 1930s and Spanish ones of the early 1940s; until the 1970s he worked for a popular weekly Ya, periodically heading its foreign section; in both roles he appeared as "Matías Cirici-Ventalló". Another son Domingo tried his hand as historian of Latin American literature; he signed as "Domingo Cirici Ventalló". The granddaughter of Cirici Ventalló, Carmen Cirici-Ventalló Aguayo, earned her name in Mexico as music producer, painter, sculptor and translator, but also as wife of Eduardo Mata. Among other relatives Domingo's brother-in-law, Andrés Babé Botana, was moderately popular as an actor, known as "Mellaíto". Domingo's maternal uncles José Ventalló Vintró and Pedro Antonio Ventalló Vintró were acknowledged in the local Terrassa ambience, the former as a historian and the latter as a poet, "Cantor d’Egara". Two of his maternal step-cousins became known in Catalan literature in politics. Joaquín Ventalló Vergés was a Catalan poet, translator and Esquerra Republicana politician, while Lluis Ventalló Vergés was a Carlist militant and the first Francoist civil governor or the Lerida province.
caption: Terrassa, around 1901
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