Pompeu Fabra i Poch was born in the former borough of Gràcia (specifically, in carrer de la Mare de Déu de la Salut), now part of Barcelona, on 20 February 1868. He was the youngest of 13 children born to Josep Fabra i Roca and Carolina Poch i Martí. However, only three of the siblings, he and two sisters, reached adulthood.
In 1873 his father was elected mayor of the borough of Gràcia. Three years later, however, the family moved to Barcelona. When he was just 20 years old, Pompeu Fabra lost his father, a person who had had a great influence on him.
In 1902 Pompeu Fabra got married to Dolors Mestre i Climent, and they had three daughters: Carola (1904), Teresa (1908) and Dolors (1912). Pompeu Fabra lived in Bilbao for ten years with his family, and when they returned to Catalonia they settled in Badalona, where they lived for nearly 30 years.
Although he had graduated in Chemical Engineering from the Barcelona School of Industry (1890) and held the chair in Chemistry at the Bilbao School of Industrial Engineering for ten years (as of 1902), Fabra was nevertheless drawn strongly to linguistics, ever since the day when, at the age of 15, he realised that he was unable to express himself in Catalan in a letter to his cousins; unconsciously, he started writing in Spanish, and just after the greeting he stopped...
His crucial contribution to Catalan grammar started, then, with that event, in the 1880s, and took shape though his link with the magazine L’Avenç as of 1889. In 1890 and 1891 he promoted a landmark campaign for spelling reform, together with Jaume Massó and Joaquim Casas. Fabra’s main idea was clear: it was necessary to spread the correction of the Catalan language.
L’Avenç, founded in 1881, was initially a magazine dedicated to literary, artistic and scientific progress; its full title was L’Avenç Literari, Artístic i Científic. Revista mensual il·lustrada. Later on, however, L’Avenç became also a publishing house; in fact, it was considered the most important Catalan-language publishing house of its time, as it published as many as seven magazines of its own and more than 500 book titles. The L’Avenç publishing company also brought together a large group of writers and intellectuals with a common goal: to carry out cultural initiatives along the lines of the modernista movement. This made it a crucial institution in the evolution of contemporary language and culture. The friends Fabra had in the institution, especially Jaume Massó and Joaquim Casas, were involved in his first major publications, the main aim of which was to lay the foundations for a thorough spelling reform that would enable Catalan to stand on a par with the other languages of culture in its vicinity.
On another note, it was Pompeu Fabra who founded, in 1911, the Philology Section of the Institute of Catalan Studies, and was its President from 1917 to 1948, after Antoni M. Alcover had held the position for the first years. Pompeu Fabra was also President of the Institute of Catalan Studies, intermittently, between 1921 and 1935. Furthermore, Fabra was a professor at the University of Barcelona, and when the University became autonomous he was Chairman of the University Board (1933).
Because of his position, after the 1934 insurrection known as the Fets d’Octubre, Pompeu Fabra was imprisoned on the steamship Uruguay. Nevertheless, he continued his linguistic studies, and during the six weeks and a day he was imprisoned on the ship he prepared a lecture on the evolution of words.
In addition to his engineering studies and his great passion for the Catalan language, Fabra was also a keen sports lover; he was a member of the Centre Excursionista de Catalunya (Hiking Centre of Catalonia) from 1891; he played tennis professionally, and was a member of the tennis section of Futbol Club Barcelona; he founded Badalona Lawn-Tennis Club, in 1914; he was Chairman of the Catalan Tennis Federation from 1927 to 1935; from 1930 to 1935, he was Chairman of the Catalan national youth organisation Palestra, which organised, among other activities, hiking and sports competitions; and lastly, he was the first Chairman of the Unió Catalana de Federacions Esportives (Catalan Union of Sports Federations), now renamed Unió de Federacions Esportives de Catalunya (UFEC).
After the war of 1936-1939, Pompeu Fabra had to go into exile in France. He crossed over into the French state at coll del Pertús, having spent the night at Mas Perxés, outside the village of Agullana, in the county of Alt Empordà. In France he lived first in the North Catalan town of Illa, in Rosselló, and then in Paris, Montpellier and Perpinyà. He spent the last years of his life in Prada, in Conflent, where he died on Christmas Day 1948. He is buried in the cemetery of the town, as is his daughter Teresa. Prada was the home of several other famous exiles, including Pau Casals, Josep Maria de Sagarra, Joan Alavedra and Francesc Pujols, among others.
In spite of the adverse conditions in which Pompeu Fabra had to live for the last years of his life, before he died he almost completed a new grammar of the Catalan language, which was published in 1956 by his fellow linguist Joan Coromines. In 1945 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Toulouse.
In 1947, when he was 79 and in fact he had little time left to live, Pompeu Fabra wanted to make a will. And in order to do so in Catalan he travelled to Sant Julià de Lòria, in Andorra, where after a long, gruelling journey he was able to make his will in Catalan. In this way the Maestro gave one last lesson in endurance, consistency and fidelity to the Catalan language and nation.