The historic building of the UB offers literary tours: “Here begins the blissful time of my youth”

BarcelonaLike Alice chasing the white rabbit, we enter the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona, following in the footsteps of a very excited Joan Maragall (1860-1911), who has convinced his father that he is not suited to industrial work and wants to pursue a career. The young heir chooses Law because he doesn't dare "apply for a degree without practical application," but what he really aspires to is "to rub shoulders with the enlightened youth," he writes in the Autobiographical Notes"Here begins the blissful time of my youth," he added.

The university's Historic Building had been inaugurated in 1872, seven years before Maragall passed through the doors of "the temple of the wisdomSince then, many generations of young people—and future writers—have passed through these classrooms, cloisters, and solemn walls. To mark the 575th anniversary of the founding of the University of Barcelona, thanks to a privilege granted by Alfonso the Magnanimous, a series of events has been organized. a new free literary route which allows you to visit the most iconic spaces of the house by reading the writings of authors such as Maria Aurèlia Capmany, Teresa Pàmies or Alexandre Cirici, based on the anthology Secret Worlds (UB, 2023), by Noemí Montetes-Mairal and Joan Santanach.

We cross the lobby with Maragall, but when we emerge into the Ferran Soldevila Gardens it's time to read the art critic Alexandre Cirici (1914-1983). In his memoirs, The weather was closed (1973), explained how she experienced, during the 1933-34 academic year, the transition from "the old bureaucratic University"—which she described as dirty, decrepit, and with those gardens we walked through that "stinked of garbage and cat urine"—to an autonomous, civilized, and interesting place, under the presidency.

A student as a guide

The tour guide is Aísha Targarona, a fourth-year Art History student on a collaborative scholarship with the University of Barcelona (UB). Since she studies at the Faculty of Geography and History in the Raval neighborhood, she's just as fascinated by walking through this building as the visitors will be. "It's been like falling in love with the university all over again," she tells me. She's wearing a lovely University of Barcelona sweater, a gift she received for the tour. I learn as soon as I arrive that the UB has a little merchandise shop at the entrance to the building in Plaça Universitat. It turns out that, since this fashion is more of a tourist trend, the shops on La Rambla have copied it and are selling knock-offs for tourists. Such is the nature of turbo-capitalism.

We went up to the Mathematics Cloister to read the poet and pioneer of Catalan sociolinguistics, Francesc Vallverdú, who recalls the "fraternal joy we once felt in the cloisters." Resistance and friendship should be university subjects. We entered the Paraninfo with Teresa Pàmies, who first came here for the Women's May of 1976, passed through the library in silence so as not to disturb the students at their computers, most of them with headphones, and outside we picked up a novel by Professor Glòria Sabaté that speaks... The veil of the goddess (2020). In the Arts Courtyard, we discover that university was "one of the greatest disappointments" in the life of the hurricane Capmany, who remembers "that Arts Courtyard full of uniforms, cassocks, and habits." It was the autumn of '37.

The route ends in the Science Courtyard with a reference to the latest publishing release that speaks, A girl in the cityMercè Ibarz's memoirs describe her arrival at this place as "a baptism into the city." "Teenagers who grow up here come to the university," says Vice-Rector Agustí Alcoberro. "They experience their first protests, their first crushes, or, even more in a literary sense, their first heartbreak." Aísha confirms this: "That brought a tear to my eye. These are pivotal years, from the age of eighteen!" she exclaims from her vantage point of being twenty-two: three years is an eternity. "When I think about my university years, I'll think of this landscape."