Constitution of 1978 and despite his already being the most-read writer in the Catalan language, fellow Catalan authors (overwhelmingly of the Left) did not forgive him for his support of the Francoists during the Civil War and his later coexistence with the régime (Pla had counted on a peaceful and ordered evolution towards democracy). He was also criticised by Catalan authors because of his disdain for fiction as a literary form. Even so, in 1980, near the end of his life, Josep Tarradellas gave him the Medalla d'Or de la Generalitat de Catalunya (The Gold Medal of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia). It is worth mentioning, as it represented a minor fissure in the so-far monolithic rejection of Pla by writers in Catalan, that Joan Coromines, a fundamental Catalan etymologist, supported Pla in his own acceptance speech for the gold medal Coromines that was also granted. Pla died in 1981 in his native Empordà, leaving thirty-eight volumes (over twenty-five thousand pages) of Obra Completa (Complete Works) published, and many unedited papers that have been published since his death. Notability of his work Pla had to live under censorship for much of his life: first during Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, later in Italy and Germany (where he worked as a correspondent during the rise of the Falange), and during Francisco Franco's long rule. Although he initially sympathised with the dictatorship (he wrote in 1940 that it was "in the general interest"), his support only lasted a few months. He soon began to feel scepticism, especially as it became impossible to publish in Catalan. Although he always maintained a moderate political stance to allow him to publish, he was deeply uncomfortable with Franco's tireless censorship (he wrote in one of his diaries that it was "the worst that [I] have known", carried out by "servants of fanaticism"). He hated the regime's disdain for Catalan language and culture and its stubborn inability to turn itself into a democracy, not even a tutelary one. The most important characteristics of the "Planian" literary style are simplicity, irony, and clarity. Extremely modest and sensitive to ridicule, he detested artifice and empty rhetoric. Throughout his literary life he remained faithful to his own rubric: “the necessity of a clear, precise, and restrained writing”. He maintained a lack of interest in literary fiction, cultivating a dry, apparently simple, practical style, devoted to that which is real. He was