Català Castellano

The new Teacher Tranining College building (1964-) (photograph by: P.Cornellà). form: La Normal de Girona : 150 anys d'història.

The Teacher Training College of Girona (for men only) was founded in 1844 on La Força Street, future site of the Institut de Segon Ensenyament. Since then and with only brief interruptions it has remained in Girona and maintained its role in the training of primary school teachers (women as well since 1914) leading to the present studies carried out in the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the University of Girona.

From the beginning, the college has had a library. In the Inventario de los objetos que constituyen el material de enseñanza de esta escuela, Gerona noviembre de 1880 (AHG, dossier / file 1849), the only inventory record remaining from the first period of the college, a library containing the principal works required for the university course of study as well as other useful information is mentioned.

In an 1882 report, Reseña de las vicisitudes y progresos de esta Escuela desde su creación (AHG, dossier 1489), it is explained that the library has at its disposal more than 500 volumes and that each year part of the budget is earmarked for the acquisition of books.

The most recent, from 1897, tells us "... the Library is fairly complete and contains almost one thousand volumes".

Because that library is the same as the one at present, we can follow the evolution of the teacher training over two centuries.

Isabel Dalmau i Sendra (Pals, 1907- Girona, 1999) completed her primary and secondary studies and her teacher training in Girona, where she obtained the degree of "Master of Primary Education" on 15 March 1929. During the academic year 1930-31 she extended her studies at the Université du Travail in Charleroi (Belgium) and began working as a primary school teacher (always in the public schools) in 1931, first as an intern in Blanes and then, with permanent positions, in the schools of Pujarnol (1933-34) and Bordils (1934-36) and then, in Girona (1936-1978), in the Botet i Sisó, Carles Marx, Lorenzana, Portal Nou i Eiximenis schools. She participated in courses on Modern Mathematics and Sciences at the "Rosa Sensat" Summer School and also summer courses at the University of Pau, specialising in French and teaching French.

Lluís Maria Mestras i Martí (Cassà de la Selva, 1902 - Girona, 1988) was an inspector in the regional office of Ensenyament de Girona for thirty years (1942-1972) but, above all, he was a great scholar of the history of pedagogy in Girona and in Catalonia.

He studied in the Girona Teacher Training College and in the Escuela de Estudios Superiores del Magisterio de Madrid. In 1931 he earned a permanent position as an educational inspector with the best grade on the competitive examination. After working in Palma de Mallorca and in Castelló de la Plana, in 1942 he was assigned to Girona, where he would stay.

He was one of the pioneers in the struggle for transportation for school children and when the service was finally inaugurated in 1962, he was named provincial director. Girona was at the forefront, just behind Álava, of the movement to provide transportation for school children. By 1972 some one hundred itineraries had been established. Along with his work as an inspector, he was a professor of geography at the Escola de Mestres of Girona from 1942 to 1954.

He was also the director of the Girona delegation of the Sociedad Española de Pedagogía and was a member of the executive committee of the Pedagogy Conference held in Barcelona in 1954.

In 1962 the French government selected him to attend a course at the International Childhood Centre in Paris.

In his collaboration with various professional journals, he wrote critical assessments of some aspects of the education act of 1970 (the Villar Palasí act) and he published the book Pruebas objetivas and a research work, Causas y remedios contra el analfabetismo, honoured by the Junta Central contra el Analfabetismo.

When he retired in 1972, he was admitted to the Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio and the Pre-School of Olot was named after him. At that time he started writing biographies of Girona teachers, which appeared regularly from 1979 to 1984 in the local and regional press, principally in Punt Diari and in Presència. These biographies were subsequently collected in two books: L’aportació gironina al desenvolupament de la pedagogia catalana, published in 1983, and Mestres d'aquell temps, published posthumously in 1999.

Lluís Maria Mestras i Martí was honoured in tributes by teachers, students, university colleagues and authorities in recognition of his professional and personal integrity. Many of them remembered kindness during his time as an inspector in Mallorca, when he had to take part, as the secretary, in the Comissió Depuradora del Magisteri created by the enemies of the Republic. In many instances he voted her conscience and recommended less harsh sentences than other members of the tribunal, until he herself was denounced and accused of contempt.

Acces to the inventory of Mestras Donation

Salvador Ferrer C. Maura (Girona 1902-1985) studied at both the School Group and at the Teacher Training College of Girona. Having finished his secondary studies in Girona, he was admitted to the Escola d'Estudis Superiors de Magisteri, in Madrid, where he studied to be a teacher trainer in Arts and Pedagogy. For three consecutive years he was a teacher and director of the School Camps organised by the city of Girona. He was a primary school inspector in Soria, Leon, Guadalajara and Salamanca. In Leon he was director of the local radio station and was the chairman of the Ateneo and the Press Association. With a government grant he continued his training in France, Belgium and Switzerland and visited the most important educational organisations in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, carrying out studies of school psychology and organisation.

Back at his post as an inspector, he worked in Guadalajara and Salamanca. Subsequently he was assigned to the committee of complementary services of the Ministry of Education and Science as an inspector of the Department of Pre-Schools and School Transportation.

He has undertaken the considerable task of disseminating educational ideas, presenting papers at conferences in Brussels, The Hague, Amsterdam, Madrid and various cultural and educational centres in Spanish capital cities.

His book, Una institución docente española: La Escuela de Estudios Superiores del Magisterio (1909-1932), published in Madrid in 1973 continues to be an important reference in the history of Spanish education.

He was also an accomplished writer, especially as a playwright and is the author of a dozen plays (one of them, El Condestable, won the 1965 "Lope de Vega" award given by the City of Madrid) as well as novels and other publications. In addition, he was a scriptwriter of popular theatrical programs during the first period of Spanish television (Teatro Apolo, Teatro Real, Teatro de la Zarzuela and Telesainete). He was also president of the Círculo Catalán of Madrid.

Acces to Ferrer's ex-libris

Acces to the inventory of the Ferrer Donation

Ramon Boixadós (Barcelona, 1897-1983) studied to be a teacher at the Teacher Training College of Barcelona, worked as a teacher at the school in Encamp, in Andorra and held a permanent teaching position in Manyanet, in the municipality of Benés (Lleida). In 1921 he participated in the Summer School thanks to a grant from the Mancomunitat de Catalunya. In 1923 he moved to Ripoll where he concentrated his efforts on teaching. He was selected to take part in a study trip to Castilla and the north of Spain.

From 1927 he collaborated with the journal El Magisterio Gerundense  and several of his articles were reproduced in El Magisterio Nacional . He defended the single school idea and called attention to the important mission of teachers expanding and perfecting their own knowledge. He was also the editor of the journal El Magisteri Català, a publication of the Federació de Mestres de Catalunya. 

In Ripoll he promoted associationism between the teachers of the Ripollès and Cerdanya and managed to create the teachers association of those districts and was its first president. Subsequently he was chosen to be the representative from the provincial association of Girona in the national association. He was a member of the Associació de Mestres de Catalunya and at the Assemblea de Manresa in July 1936 he was chosen president by popular acclaim. However, subsequent events did not allow him to take office.

In 1931 he was named teacher of the Patronat Escolar de Barcelona, he worked in the Lluís Vives school group. Afterwards he transferred to the Rosselló school group, attached to the Institut Escola where he worked together with other teachers from Girona. He was an advocate of an active school, making excursions, initiating museums, creating libraries, performing manual labour, etc. And, above all, he promoted everything related to language learning.

After the Civil War he was suspended without pay for two years and he was transferred to the Uruguay school group where he retired at seventy years of age. During the two years of suspension he taught evening classes at the Escola Laboral Tèxtil, created by Narcís de Carreras, where he continued working after returning to his teaching post.

Jordi Verrié i Faget (Barcelona, 1923-Santa Cristina d'Aro, 2001) is the author of Continuïtat pedagògica catalana durant els segles XVIII i XIX (a wide-ranging collection of articles he had published in Avui). In the introduction to the book we can find the best explanation for his relationship with the world of education:

"The ambition of this collection is modest, right and proper given my amateur training. Instructed in jobs far removed from pedagogical research, I have verged upon it by chance; like the protest of a man who has been denied since he was small the schools to which he had a

natural right to attend, with the excuses, first of a dictatorship, then of an autonomous government without sufficient resources and, later, of a war and of a military occupation".

He is also the author of Una escola que no vol morir: exposició de llibres d'escola catalana dels segles XVIII, XIX i XX, of the prologue to the book by Rosa Mut and Teresa Martí La resistència escolar catalana en llibres(1716-1939) , and was responsible for the publication Un llarg i venturós pelegrinatge in 1983, as well as a collaborator with the journal Crònica d'Ensenyament.

As a bibliophile he was impassioned by books, especially those related to teaching and children's literature. He placed his personal collection within the reach of everyone by means of expositions that travelled throughout Catalonia. This legacy has been shared between the Library of Catalonia, the National Archives of Catalonia, the University of Girona Library and the public libraries of Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Santa Cristina d'Aro.

The Jordi Verrié Donation was presented to the University of Girona in the summer of 2001 by his brother, Frederic-Pau, and includes a bibliographic collection with more than 600 copies as well as an archive containing various documents related to his studies, publications and expositions.

Acces to Verrié's ex-libris.

Acces to the inventory of the Jordi Verrié Archive

Acces to books of the Jordi Verrié Donation

Josep Pallach i Carolà (Figueres 1920-Esclanyà 1977). Politician and educator. Affiliated with the Bloc Obrer i Camperol, he went into exile in 1939. With a degree in Philosophy and Arts from the University of Montpellier, he secretly entered Catalonia in 1942, was arrested in 1944, escaped from the prison of Girona in 1946 and returned to France where he earned the Diploma of Psychology at the Sorbonne and dedicated himself to teaching, especially at the Institut Pilot of Montgeron. Upon his return to Catalonia in 1969 he joined the Autonomous University of Barcelona

working in various centres: the "Joanot Martorell" Institute, the Educational Sciences Institute - where he was the head of the Department of Educational Orientation - the University College of Teaching Training, and the College of Social Work. In Girona he was professor at the University College of Girona and director of the regional office of the Educational Sciences Institute where he promoted courses in Catalan language and literature and ongoing teacher training. His doctoral dissertation on pedagogical reform in the regions of Girona at the beginning of the 20^th century was published in 1978 under the title Els mestres públics i la reforma de l'ensenyament a Catalunya. Others of his publications are: El gran problema: escola i ensenyament per a tots (1962), Els Institut Pilot i la Reforma de l'ensenyament mitjà (1971), L'explosió educativa (1975) and beyond the field of public education, among other titles, La democràcia per fer què? (1975).

He was the founder of the Socialist Movement of Catalonia. Towards the end of the Franco regime, in 1974, he created the Reagrupament Democràtic i Socialista which would become the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) two years later.

Lluïsa, Antoni and Josep were three siblings from Girona who were all teachers. At the beginning of the 20^th century they studied at the Teacher Training College of Girona. They then taught in different Catalan towns during the monarchy and the Second Republic, in peace and in war. Lluïsa taught in Sant Jaume de Llierca, Sant Antoni de Vilamajor and in a Barcelona. Antoni was a teacher in Lloret de Mar, Vinyoles d’Orri, Esponellà and Cassà de la Selva. Josep worked first in Hospitalet de Llobregat in a private school under the auspices of the Associació Protectora de l'Ensenyança Catalana and later in the public schools of Mieres, in Garrotxa, and in Calafell.

With the occupation of the country by Franco's army they went into exile, first to France and then to

Mexico. Settled in the city of Cordoba (State of Veracruz), they started to teach in 1940 in the Colegio Cervantes, one of the schools created with economic aid from the Spanish government in exile. There they worked until the 1980s when they retired. All three of them died in exile in Mexico, their second homeland.  

At the Colegio Cervantes they continued putting into practice active and reforming methodologies used by most of the Republican teachers in Catalonia. They were known for their active teaching, based on experience and observation, a teaching style in which the child is considered to be the centre of the educational experience. Antoni, who was a good drawer, published a map of Catalonia edited by the Confederació d’Entitats Catalanes d’Amèrica in 1947 in Mexico City.

They never cut themselves off sentimentally from their country and they maintained frequent and abundant correspondence with family, university companions and former students.

The son of Josep Bargés and of Carme Mestras, a teacher from Tarragona who also went into exile, donated a part of the library of his father and of his aunt and uncle.

Acces to some letters of  J. Bargés

Acces to the inventory of the Bargés Donation

The Lluís Esteva Donation
 

Lluís Esteva

Lluís Esteva i Cruañas (Sant Feliu de Guíxols 1906–1994) divided his life between his teaching vocation and his interest in archaeology. He started to work as a teacher in 1931 in Moreira–Fonsagrada (Lugo). Three years later, in 1934, he moved to Begur, where his pedagogical concerns led him to become president of the Associació de Mestres d’Escoles Nacionals del Partit de la Bisbal. In 1938 he was drafted into the Republican army and, after going through a post-war process of rehabilitation, returned to his school until 1949, the year in which he competed for and won a post in his native city, where he continued to work until his retirement in 1967.

As a result of his participation in the Catalan Government Summer Schools he established contacts with professors of the stature of Galí, Martorell, Costal, Masó, Vila or Santaló, among others, who introduced him to the basic ideas of the Escola Nova, which he then applied in his one-teacher school in Begur: taking field trips, organising nature observations, introducing public exams, creating a weather station (honoured with an award from the Ministry of the Air Force) as well as a major school library, attempting to begin a school publication that even had a name “Forja”, and organising tributes to Doctors Pericot (archaeologist) and Arruga (ophthalmologist) which never took place because the proper permits had not been obtained. The path that led him to archaeology or local studies began in Begur when he and his students, under the guidance of Dr. Pericot, excavated the local castle and the Torrent dolmen. Upon his return to Sant Feliu and at the request of Dr. Pericot, he studied and excavated Daina’s Cave dolmen, the Boussarenys site, the Bell-lloc glass oven site and the Murtra menhir. In 1955 he was named as the local delegate of the National Archaeological Excavations Service. In 1969 he was named corresponding academic of the Royal Academy of Belles Lettres of Barcelona, in 1984 he received a diploma in Recognition of Achievements from the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and in 1987 he was named corresponding academic of the Institute of Catalan Studies. In 1981 he founded the Institute of Baix Empordà Studies of which he was president until his death. Among his publications we find “Prehistoria de la comarca guixolense” I and II (in Anales del Instituto de Estudios Gerundenses, 1957), Sepulcros megalíticos de las Gabarras, I and II, Sepulcros megalíticos del Alto Ampurdán, L’escut d’armes de Sant Feliu de Guíxols, El Termenal de Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1354-1980, Els llocs de la Vall d’Aro, Gissalis i el monestir guixolenc, 881-1199 (the last two in collaboration with Lluís Pallí). He was also a collaborator of La Vanguardia between 1966 and 1975. (Biographical data extracted from the article "Lluís Esteva i Cruañas: dades per a una biografia", in Estudis sobre el Baix Empordà, nr. 14). This fund has its own bookplate Access to the Lluís Esteva Donation inventory

The Collection on the scout movement
 

Extraído de: Escoltisme, ruta de llibertat

The collection on the scout movement includes different gifts, the first one of them was that of Manel Subirà, a historic member of the catalan boy-scouts.  Then came de documents from the priest Jordi Font, head of the scouts of Girona; from Tomàs Costa, one of their founders in Olot, from Joaquim Franch and from Jordi Verrié.  This collection is made of books and journals.The books are of two types: on one hand those of more pedagogical or doctrinal content and on the oher those of techniques, games, etc.  Among the magazines, we find the ones published in Catalonia as well as the French ones, with great diffusion in our country.  This collection represents a very useful source for the study of a movement with so much repercussion in Catalonia, specially during the Franco regime.

Acces to the inventory of the  Collectionon the scout movement

Access to the History of Education Collection catalogue

The History of education Collection catalogue is contained in the UdG Library Catalogue . To access this particular collection, it is necessary to follow the following instructions:

Before starting a search, within the options "Search limits" and in the pull-down menu "Location", choose "B. Vell-R-FHE"

Collection documents

"Lluís Esteva i Begur".Forja: publicació periòdica de l'Arxiu Municipal de Begur, núm.1 (agost 2007). Pp. 6-20

La UdG destaca el testimoni de Jordi Verrié en la història de la pedagogia. El Punt, 25-IV-2006

La UdG rep el fons Verrié, un dels millors de Catalunya en història de l'educació. Diari de Girona, 25-IV-2006

Homenatge a Jordi Verrié: Girona, 24-IV-2006:
         -Program
         -Photographies

Verrié, Frederic-Pau. "Ex-libris Jordi Verrié i Faget". Revista de Girona, núm. 237 (juliol-agost 2006). p. 114

Ferrer Culubret, Maria. "Ex-libris Salvador Ferrer C. Maura". Revista de Girona, núm. 231 (juliol-agost 2005). P. 114

Padrés i Brugué, Isabel. El fons documental de Jordi Verrié i Faget: una aportació a la història de l'educació catalana. 2005

Marquès, Salomó. “Fons per a la Història de l’Educació : Universitat de Girona”. Revista de Girona, núm. 222 (gener-febrer 2004). P. 114

Creen a Palafrugell una associació per difondre el pensament polític i pedagògic de Josep Pallach. El Punt, 26-I-2003.

Pujol, David. " Jordi Verrié i Faget, insinuador i facilitador de camins: in memoriam". Educació i història, núm. 6 (2003). P. 168

Un acte i un llibre reivindiquen Josep Pallach com a pedagog en el 25è aniversari de la seva mort. El Punt, 15-I-2002

Ciències de l'Educació de la UdG portarà el nom de Pallach i rebrà el seu fons bibliogràfic. El Punt, 17-V-2002

Links

• Sociedad Española de Historia de la Educación
• MUPEGA (Museo Pedagóxico de Galícia)
• Museo del niño y Centro de documentación histórica de la Escuela de Albacete
• Asociación de Escuelas Graduadas de Cartagena
• Museo Escolar Agrícola de Puçol
• Centro de Investigación MANES