The architect Elías Torres and the writer Maria Antònia Oliver, Balearic gold medals 2022

The Consell de Govern has agreed to award this year two gold medals from the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands: one posthumously to the writer Maria Antònia Oliver and the other to Elías Torres i Tur.

The Gold Medal is the highest award granted by the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, and its purpose is to honor the merits achieved, individually or collectively, by natural or legal persons who have distinguished themselves by their personal or professional career in the defense, promotion or fostering of the institutions and general interests of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands, and whose work has had a special projection outside the scope of the Balearic Islands.

Maria Antònia Oliver (Manacor, December 4, 1946 – Sencelles, February 10, 2022) is a writer who began to stand out in the 1970s. She began in literature with novels focused on the problem of transformations in society in Mallorca, with a fantastic and dreamlike base.

Her narrative is varied and gives a special role to women. One of her most outstanding productions is in the field of crime novels, in which she produces the series of the Majorcan detective based in Barcelona, Lònia Guiu, and who touches on issues of social criticism in a fast-paced environment.

The writer Maria Antonia Oliver. Photo: GOIB.

Elías Torres i Tur (Ibiza, 1944) is an Ibizan architect. He holds a doctorate from the Barcelona School of Architecture and is currently a professor at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia since 1979. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and a resident at the Spanish Academy of Rome (1990).

Among his most outstanding projects are the houses of the Olympic Village in Barcelona, the restoration of Park Güell in Barcelona, the Rauchwerk house in New Orleans (1986), the annex to the Kumamoto Museum in Japan (1992), the Plaza del Foro in Barcelona (2004) or the Ses Voltes space in Palma. He has received the FAD Award in 1986, 1988 and 1992. In 2008 he received the Ramon Llull Award, and in 2016 the Spanish National Architecture Award.