Dalmau Costa or the success of a Catalan exiled in Mexico

"The ambition of every Mexican who prides himself on being something is to have a house in the Lomas de Chapultepec, own a Cadillac, and be on familiar terms with Dalmau Costa." This phrase was published by a newspaper in the Mexican capital and was explained thus by the Catalan writer exiled to Mexico, Vicenç Riera Llorca. Given the bluntness of the statement, it is imperative to ask who Dalmau Costa is.

Thanks to the Fundació Josep Irla and through the invaluable work of historian Lluís Burillo, we will know. Soon, the biography of Dalmau Costa i Vilanova (El Port de la Selva 1902 – Mexico City 1974) will see the light. One more story of exile among the many that the Fundació Josep Irla has been publishing in recent years in the desire to learn more about the men and women who played an important role during the thirties and what happened to their lives.

Dalmau Costa, trained at the Seminary of Girona, occasional journalist, theater critic, and man of letters, became a successful businessman in the restaurant sector and a cultural patron in Mexico, and along the way, he became the first great public relations officer for the Parliament and the Republican Generalitat of the thirties. Dalmau Costa was one of those essential characters that the too broad stroke of history covered with earth.

His biography does not fit any of the patterns of many Catalanist politicians and intellectuals of the thirties. He did not come from mystics or great captains, as Raimon would say. His family owned an inn in El Port de la Selva. As a young man, he was sent to the seminary in Girona, where he was educated and from which he absorbed the foundations of classical culture and a good command of language. He left the seminary and his studies to become a customs agent. Like many young people from Alt Empordà, the customs offices of La Jonquera and Portbou were too close. Easy, well-paid, white-collar work. Despite his family's humble origins, he inherited from his mother a love for reading, which is why very soon, when he managed to move to Barcelona to work, he frequented the Ateneu and various cultural circles of the emerging Catalanism of the twenties and thirties. His friendship and relationship with Josep Maria de Sagarra, Josep Maria Planes, Joaquim Ventalló, and Ernest Guasp, among many others, are testament to his intellectual curiosity.

Dalmau Costa was one of Josep Tarradellas' great friends. In fact, the biography explains that at the congress of Catalan left-wing parties in March 1931, where Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya was founded, Costa played a decisive role in convincing Tarradellas to rejoin the congress, as he had decided to leave moments before due to the disagreements and heated discussions that took place there.

Due to his family tradition in the hospitality sector, his stays in Paris as a result of exiles forced by political repression —Paris was the capital of the world at that time, especially if we think of the restaurant, fashion, or hospitality sectors— and his culture, Dalmau Costa became one of the pioneers in protocol in Catalonia and became the head of stewardship and ceremonies of the Parliament of Catalonia upon its foundation in 1932.

He worked under the mandates of Lluís Companys and Joan Casanovas and also under the orders of Josep Tarradellas during the civil war. His commitment to democratic institutions led him to exile, first in France and finally in Mexico, where one of his brothers had already taken refuge.

His biography does not fit any of the patterns of many Catalanist politicians and intellectuals of the 1930s. He did not come from mystics or great captains, as Raimon would say.

In Mexico, Dalmau Costa, not without initial difficulties, triumphed. He opened restaurants such as Ambassadeurs, the great French cuisine restaurant in Mexico.Thanks to Ambassadeurs, there was a before and after in Mexican restoration.It became the canon of international cuisine in that country. Later came La Cava and El Restaurante del Lago. Through his restaurants and the banquets he was commissioned for, passed, among others, General De Gaulle, the Kennedy couple, Richard Nixon, Cantinflas, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, John Wayne, Diego Rivera, André Malraux, Josip Broz "Tito" or Haile Selassie, as well as most Mexican dignitaries and cultural figures.

But beyond knowing how to create restaurants and becoming a reference for French and international cuisine on the American continent, Dalmau Costa stood out with his innate and selfless vocation as a public relations person and friend of friends. He became the founder of associations of hospitality professionals in Mexico, employer federations, training schools... he created a civic universe in his environment from scratch, where everything was still to be structured. Dalmau Costa, due to his Catalanism and his solid economic position, became the great patron of Catalan culture in Mexico, financing everything from magazines, literary competitions, the floral games, to refloating and unifying ERC in Mexico. From the North American country, he also defrayed many of the cultural initiatives of the Catalan exile in France.

Dalmau Costa, due to his Catalanism and his solid economic position, became the great patron of Catalan culture in Mexico

His friendship and epistolary relationship with Josep Tarradellas is a confirmation of the difficulties of the Catalan exile and of President Tarradellas himself to keep Catalan institutions, parties and associations alive in exile. Costa combined his brilliant private activity with a titanic effort to maintain institutions and collective memory during that Franco dictatorship that never ended. An anecdote: Tarradellas, beyond the political relationship, became the agent in France in search of the best wines and vintages for Costa's Mexican restaurants. To the point that he even sold him cases of Clos Mosny, the wine that President Tarradellas produced on his estate in Saint-Martin-le-Beau.

The Catalan exile is still largely unknown beyond the big names; we know the tip of the iceberg, but many vital and fascinating stories are yet to be told. Thanks to the perseverance and effort of the Josep Irla Foundation, we have gradually recovered a part of our collective memory and the mark left in other countries and cultures by those men and women who had to leave their country and their loved ones to save their lives and their word. Dalmau Costa was one of those to whom exile gave a second chance, and he took it. Others could not. I recommend you retrace the magnificent adventure so well recounted by historian Lluís Burillo.