Arnau Folch

Welcome to Llegendàrium. My name is Arnau Folch, and I hope this space allows you to discover and enjoy traditional narratives from cultures around the world.

I am an essayist and researcher specializing in the tales of oral tradition and in genres such as legend, folktale, fable and ballad. In 2017, I founded Llegendàrium, an independent project devoted to the study and dissemination of narrative folklore. During its first phase, between 2017 and 2024, I published hundreds of articles focused primarily on Catalan tradition and brought together a broad community of readers interested in these subjects.

In 2026, Llegendàrium begins a new editorial phase, now adopting a comparative and international perspective. Without abandoning the Catalan folklore from which it originated, the project broadens its scope to encompass European and global folklore, relationships between cultures and the persistence of traditional structures in the contemporary imagination.

I have published a trilogy of essays with Hermenaute devoted to the most censored, buried and darker expressions of Catalan oral tradition, examined in relation to tales from other cultures and historical periods: Rondalles de Sang (2021), Rondalles de Difunts (2022) and Rondalles del Diable (2026). The three volumes recover and analyse narratives concerning crime, violence, death, the return of the dead, evil and the figure of the devil, but also the fears, conflicts, loves, hopes and contradictions of the communities that transmitted them.

I am currently completing two new essays on folklore, scheduled for 2027, which address subjects different from those explored in the previous trilogy. My other areas of research include the survival of archetypes and folkloric motifs in popular culture, the international circulation and comparative study of legends and folktales, and the contemporary recovery of traditional tales and the ways in which this heritage can be transmitted to new readers without simplifying or diluting its complexity.

A Way of Understanding Folklore

Through my books and Llegendàrium, I aim to help make the richness of oral tradition more visible and to show that folklore is neither a form of escapism nor a dusty relic of the past to be regarded with condescension. Narrative folklore is a living, rich and powerful form of expression. It continues to transform and accompany us even when we no longer see it or believe it to be lost. It emerges in the most unexpected forms.

Among the nearly two thousand five hundred catalogued traditional tale types, we find human experiences of every kind. This heritage does not speak only of fantastical beings and marvellous worlds. It also contains realistic, ironic, burlesque, tragic and everyday narratives. In these tales, the boundary between fantasy and reality matters little, because they all speak about what we are through an immense range of shared emotions and experiences: fear, desire, violence, humour, loss, death and hope.

The tales of oral tradition therefore constitute a vast archive of human experience, transmitted from generation to generation by thousands of different voices that have left upon them the imprint of their lives: men and women, children and elders, people from every period and every continent, distant and near, very different from us and yet profoundly similar. It is a collective legacy of incalculable value, built over time by a multitude of voices.

Despite differences of time, place and culture, tales show us that human beings are not so different after all. We share desires, fears and emotions, and we pass through the same stages of life, from the cradle to the grave. Through tales, we can even encounter experiences that we have not yet lived but may one day undergo ourselves.

My work therefore begins from a very simple idea: traditional tales are not fantasies detached from reality, but narratives through which human communities have preserved, interpreted and transmitted their experiences over time. Oral tradition does not constitute a universe separate from the world, but rather a broad, plural and contradictory reflection of human life, filtered and refined by all those who came before us. I am convinced that, by listening to these voices, we can rediscover ourselves and re-enchant the reality around us.

Tales can be marvellous, comic or instructive, but also cruel, unsettling and tragic. They did not originate to be read or studied, but to be told, heard and lived. By narrating and sharing them, we draw closer to others and to ourselves: we experience what it means to be human, with all the good and bad that this entails.

In an age marked by dehumanization, loneliness and the accelerating pace of contemporary life, preserving and transmitting this heritage is more necessary than ever.

Contact

For publishing proposals, interviews, lectures, events, collaborations or other professional enquiries, you can write to me at llegendarium@llegendarium.com.