In 1905, and as part of the hiking movement (which was very popular in Catalonia at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries), he started going on excursions organized by the Ateneu Enciclopedic Popular de Barcelona (People's Encyclopedic Association of Barcelona), the aim of which was to collect samples of traditional Catalan culture in various towns in Catalonia. Between 1915 and 1926, he came into contact with the most important Catalan folklorists of the age and he took part in group projects to collect folkloric materials such as the ones organized by the Arxiu d'Etnografia i Folklore de Catalunya (Archive of Ethnography and Folkore of Catalonia) (1915-23) and the Obra del Canconer Popular de Catalunya (Popular Song Project of Catalonia) (1922-35).
Between 1926 and 1939, he consolidated his position as one of the leading Catalan folklorists, directed institutions that studied folklore, gave lectures, took part in radio programs, and published such important works as the Biblioteca de tradicions populars (Library of Popular Traditions, 1933-39). At this time, the central topics of his activity as a folklorist were dance, music, song, and customs. After 1939 he published his most voluminous works: the five-volume Costumari Catala (Catalan Customs, 1950-56) and the three-volume Folklore de Catalunya (Folklore of Catalonia, 1950-69).
The volume Folklore de Catalunya: I Rondallıstica (1950) was very well received internationally, particularly because of the numerous narratives that it contained. Its 2,215 narratives were comprised of 662 folktales, 727 traditions, and 826 legends. Walter Anderson used the international index Types of the Folktale (1928) to catalogue these folktales and in 1954 published the results of his work under the title “Eine katalanische Marchensammlung” (“A Catalan Tale Collection”) in the journal Schweizerisches Archiv fur Volkskunde. Subsequently, Stith Thompson, in his second revision of The Types of the Folktale (1961), made changes that reflect his having taken this classification into account.
Amades published articles in such international journals as Folklore (London), Folklore Americas, Revue de Traditions Populaires, and Fabula. In 1957, he published Contes Catalans (Catalan Folktales) as part of the series Contes des cinq continets (Folktales from Five Continents), edited by Paul Delarue. In the last years of his life, Amades began his project of classifying the folktales published in all the areas in which Catalan is spoken. His death in 1959 prevented him from finishing. Some years ago, Carme Oriol and Josep M. Pujol took up the project where he had left off, classified the folktales, and published _Index tipol_ogic de la rondalla catalana (Index of Catalan Folktales, 2003). In 1990, on the occasion of the centenary of Amades's birth, the book El mon de Joan Amades (The World of Joan Amades) was published. This volume contains an extensive biography of the author and a bibliographic catalogue of his work, which consists of 162 books, 103 articles, thirtynine journalistic contributions to the press and radio, and 104 unpublished works.
