Agustí Calvet (Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1887-Barcelona, 1964), better known by the pseudonym "Gaziel", was one of the most influential journalists of the first third of the 20th century in Spain. He made his professional debut in 1909 in La Veu de Catalunya, organ of the conservative party the Lliga Regionalista. In 1914 he went to Paris with the intention of resuming his studies in Philosophy and there he was surprised by the First World War. The notebook in which he wrote the atmosphere of the city and his personal impressions would be the basis of the articles that catapulted him to fame from La Vanguardia. His chronicles of the Great War made him one of the most read journalists in Spain and Latin America. Between 1914 and 1918 he compiled his articles on the war into several books. This is how volumes such as Diary of a Student in Paris (1915) and From Paris to Monastir (1917) emerged.

Between 1920 and 1936 he was director of La Vanguardia, from where he established himself as one of the most lucid political analysts of the time. He spent the civil war in exile and upon his return in 1940 he had to stop practicing his profession. He settled in Madrid, where he worked in the publishing sector, and wrote memoirs and travel books, among which Tots els camins duen a Roma stand out. History of a destiny (1958). In 1959 he returned to Barcelona, where he continued writing until his death. In the posthumous edition of his Complete Works (1970) in Catalan, fragments of his dazzling Meditations in the Desert were published, the full edition of which had to be published in Paris in 1974.