Gareth Alban Davies

Gareth Alban Davies (30 July 1926 – 9 February 2009) was a Welsh poet, educator and Hispanist who was Cowdray Professor of Spanish at the University of Leeds.

Davies translated many Spanish texts into English and Welsh, and was a noted expert on the works of Fernando Arrabal and Federico García Lorca.

[1] While still a schoolboy, Davies was introduced to the Cadwgan Circle, a group of writers and thinkers from the Rhondda, who met at the house of J. Gwyn Griffiths and his wife Käthe Bosse-Griffiths.

He continued his studies during this period, relying on discounted books from London's foremost specialised antiquarian book-seller of Catalan and Castilian language, Joan Gili.

[1] Despite his educated background, and his chaste values of refraining from smoking, drinking and womanising, in sharp contrast to many of his collier work-mates, Davies enjoyed his three years spent as a coal miner, believing it brought him closer to the working-class man of the Rhondda.