The Association of Catalan Language Writers (AELC, Associació d’Escriptors en Llengua Catalana) is a professional organisation of authors, poets, scriptwriters, translators and other writers in the Catalan language.
It was created in 1977 by more than 200 writers from all of the Catalan speaking territories, that is to say, Catalonia, the Valencian area, the Balearic Islands. From 1977 to 1988, the AELC developed the representative functions of the literary vitality of the Catalan countries. One of the primary objectives was to re-vitalize the idea of the Institute of Catalan Letters (ILC), an institution that had been active during the 1930’s until the end of the Spanish Civil War. In 1988 the ILC was finally restored and, since then, the AELC has centered its activities primarily on aspects of the writer’s union and its claims, while leaving questions of representation to the ILC.
