María Josefina Teodora Plá Guerra Galvany (9 November 1903 in Isla de Lobos, Canary Islands, Spain – 11 January 1999 in Asunción, Paraguay) was a Spanish-born poet, playwright, journalist, art critic, sculptor, ceramicist, and historian. She has been described as "the most influential woman in Paraguayan cultural matters in the twentieth century." She received numerous awards and distinctions for her artistic and literary work, for defending human rights and the equality between men and women. Personal life Maria Josefina Teodora Plá Guerra Galvany, known as Josefina Plá, was born on 9 November 1909, in Isla Lobos, Fuerteaventura, Canary Island, Spain, where her father kept a lighthouse. Plá was the first born in a family of seven to Raraela Guerra Galvany and Leopoldo Plá. She started to write at very young age of four and before seven she was already writing poetry, at ten she was writing short stories and drama at twelve. In 1923 Plá published anonymously her first poetry to a journal which her father liked not knowing it was hers. In 1925, Plá presented her writings in the youth magazine, Speaker of the Writers' Generation of Paraguayan Postmodernism. In 1924, while on vacation with her family in Villajoyosa, Alicante, Plá met the Paraguayan sculptor Andres Campos Cervera, who signed his work Julián de la Herrería. He was in Spain to study ceramics, just days from completing his course of study and returning to Paraguay. In spite of this separation, twenty months later he asked Plá's father for permission to marry her. The ceremony was performed on December 17, 1926. In 1927, Plá settled in Paraguay with her husband, and established herself in Villa Aurelia and Asunción. Plá and her husband returned twice to Spain, the first time to exhibit their ceramics works in a Madrid exhibition in 1931. They departed Paraguay for their second visit on October 17, 1934. Julián de la Herrería died in Valencia, Spain in 1937. Plá came back to Paraguay a year later. Plá died on 11 January 1999 in Asuncion. Artistic career Plá's sculpture and ceramic work has been described as providing an archive of the cultural history of Paraguay. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout South America. Some of the murals and mosaics she created still can be viewed on the buildings of Asunción. Some of her pottery is exhibited in the foyer of Centro Cultural de España Juan de Salazar