Balcells i González, Albert

Ferrer i  Mallol, M. Teresa

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

CATALAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, 6: 111-113 (2013)
Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona
ISSN: 2013-407X
http://revistes.iec.cat/chr/
Biographical sketches of the new members of the  
History-Archaeology Section
Dolors Bramon was born in 
Banyoles on the 31st of Decem-
ber 1943. She studied in the 
Faculty of Philosophy and Hu-
manities at the Universitat de 
Barcelona, where she specialised 
in Semitic languages. There she 
was a disciple of Joan Vernet, a 
member of the Institute, whose 
obituary she wrote, which was 
published in issue 5 of this 
journal, pp. 117-119 / 239-240.
Immediately after earning her Bachelor’s with an Ex-
traordinary Prize (1969), she wrote the vast majority of arti-
cles on the Semitic world for the Gran enciclopèdia catalana 
and supervised the external contributions in this subject.
She is a several-time winner of the Joan Fuster Essay 
Prize as part of the October Awards in the region of Va-
lencia. She won the first, in 1976, for the collective publi-
cation Raons d’identitat del País Valencià (Edicions 3 i 4, 
1977). Her contribution, “Una llengua, dues llengües, 
tres llen gües”, examines the speech of Valencians of 
Al-Andalus, or Saracens, as they were known in the 
Middle Ages. Obviously, this was a dialect of Arabic. Its 
publication necessitated a change in tactics among those 
who groundlessly claimed that Valencian was the lan-
guage that the Mozarabs and Moors of the country must 
have spoken. The second time (1981), she won the Joan 
Fuster Essay Prize with the work Contra moros i jueus 
(Edicions 3 i 4, 1981), in which she studied the discrimi-
nation suffered by religious minorities in the Kingdom 
of Valencia. This book has been translated into Spanish 
(Península, 1986) and Arabic (Ministry of Culture of 
Egypt, 2005). In fact, one of her fields of study is still reli-
gious minorities in the Crown of Catalonia and Aragon, 
and she has recently taken an active role in a number of 
conferences commemorating the expulsion of the Moors 
who had converted to Christianity.
In 1984, she defended her first doctoral thesis, which 
sought to compare the Arabic text by Andalusian geogra-
pher al-Zuhri with a 14th century Spanish translation. In 
the words of Dr Vernet, when he proposed Dolors Bramon 
as a corresponding member of this Institute in 1996, “this is 
a work showing vast erudition which adds new details to 
those known to date about the methods used by the medi-
aeval translators. What is more, it sheds light on certain epi-
sodes in our cultural life in the 12th century, along with a 
series of ethnographic legends and ideas that were in vogue 
at that time.” As Vernet himself concludes in the prologue 
to its publication (Ausa, 1991), the author “ingeniously, bril-
liantly and knowledgeably resolved the difficulties in her 
research”.
Al-Zuhri’s treatise enables us to identify, for example, 
the “rabitam de Cascall”, which appears in a donation 
deed granted by the Count of Barcelona Ramon Beren-
guer II to the abbot of the monastery of Sant Cugat del 
Vallès in the year 1097, as the latter-day town of Sant 
Carles de la Ràpita in El Montsià. The description of it by 
this Arab writer, who personally visited the fortified her-
mitage, was the subject of Dolors Bramon’s talk at the 
conference on fortified hermitages, or ràpites, in 1989, 
which was later published (ICMA-CEROMDI, 1993). 
Her careful study of the texts by Muslim geographers 
and her knowledge of Catalan toponyms, both major 
and minor, enabled her to identify the names of the plac-
es mentioned by another geographer, al-Idrīsī, in her 
study published in homage to Emilio García Gómes en-
titled “Identificación de algunos topónimos de la dióce-
sis de Tortosa citados por al-Idrisi” (El Caire, 1998). She 
revisited this topic in her welcome speech as a new mem-
ber of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans, which was entitled 
Reivindicació catalana del geògraf al-Idrīsī (2012). Some 
of her studies on toponyms have been compiled into a 
book published in conjunction with Rosa Lluch Bramon 
entitled Mots remots. Setze estudis d’història i de toponímia 
catalana (Girona, Curbet, 2002).
Her second thesis, supervised by Dr Manuel Riu and 
defended in the Faculty of Geography and History, 
which also won an Extraordinary Prize (1999), was the 
response to a commission from the Institut d’Estudis 
Catalans to continue the Arabic chronicles studied by J. 
M. Millàs, entitled De quan érem o no musulmans. Tex-
tos del 713 al 1010 (continuació de l’obra de J. Ma Millàs 
i Vallicrosa). It was co-published by the Institut d’Estudis 
Catalans and Eumo in 2000, and a second edition came 
out two years later. With the study of 494 new frag-
ments added to the 131 exhumed by Millàs, this work 
marks a turning point in our knowledge of the Islamic 
past of the lands currently falling within Catalonia, and 
it is a seminal reference for the early Middle Ages in 
Catalonia.
Also quite noteworthy are her efforts as a philologist as 
she studies the loanwords from Arabic in the Hispanic 
languages, especially Catalan, a field in which she has 
worked with the Office of Onomastics and the Lexico-
graphic Offices of the IEC, and with Termcat since 2002. 
She won the 24th Prize for Linguistic Normalisation 
granted by the Ateneu Cultural de Girona (2010) for her 
Catalan Historical 6 (Eng).indd   111 25/06/13   11:49
112   Cat. Hist. Rev. 6, 2013 Biographical sketches of the new members of the History-Archaeology Section 
work on Arabisms. In the field of philology, also worth 
note is her article “Aglutinación y deglutinación del ar-
tículo en arabismos del castellano y del catalán” published 
in Vox Romanica (1987).
Dr Bramon has shown herself to be especially prepared 
to study topics which refer to the political, social and eco-
nomic history of the Muslims. This can be clearly seen in 
her numerous invaluable publications on the Islam of Al-
Andalus and on Mudejars and baptised Moors. She has also 
efficiently dealt with the history of the mediaeval Jews. Geo-
graphically, her research encompasses all the Catalan-
speaking lands today with the exception of the town of 
L’Alguer, or Alghero, on Sardinia.
Another important facet of Dolors Bramon is her exten-
sive work on Islam as a religion. Some of her best-known 
works include Obertura a l’islam (Fundació Joan Maragall i 
Cruïlla, 2001 and 2002) and Ser dona i musulmana (Cruïlla, 
2007 and 2008), both with prologues by Antoni Matabosch 
and translated into Spanish, the former with a prologue by 
Joan Vernet (Crítica, 2002 and 2009) and the latter by Juan 
José Tamayo (Bellaterra, 2009). We should also mention her 
work as an Islam expert in the second edition of the Dic-
cionari de la llengua catalana issued by the Institut d’Estudis 
Catalans (2007), along with her repeated participation in 
events organised by both Catholic and Muslim religious 
centres, as well as by secular organisations.
She also served as the supervisor and editor of the book 
Lluís de Santàngel: un nou home, un nou món (Generalitat 
Valenciana, 1992), which was issued to accompany the ex-
hibition to commemorate the fifth centennial of the dis-
covery of America. It also has a Spanish-language version 
published in Seville that same year to accompany the ex-
hibition when it travelled to this city.
She has been a professor in the Department of Semitic 
Philology at the Universitat de Barcelona since 1987 and 
at the Institut Superior de Ciències Religioses since 2004. 
She has also taught numerous monographic, summer, 
doctoral and Master’s courses on topics not included in 
the curricula at a number of universities, foundations and 
institutions, both foreign and domestic. We should note 
that her participation has been sought by all the universi-
ties in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands.
Finally, apart from her devotion to academia in both 
teaching and research, she has also taken an active, commit-
ted role in the intellectual life of the Catalan-speaking lands.
The History-Archaeology Section and the Institut d’Est u -
dis Catalans in general needed an expert in the Islamic 
world, and for this reason we recruited Dolors Bramon to 
cover one of the vacancies among the full members. She has 
now joined the IEC’s undertakings.
Maria Teresa Ferrer
Jordi Casassas was born in 
Barcelona in 1948. He studied 
in the Faculty of Philosophy 
and Humanities at the Univer-
sitat de Barcelona, where he is a 
full professor of contemporary 
history and has six avenues of 
research, the maximum allowed. 
He began at the Universitat de 
Barcelona as a professor in charge 
of the course in 1974. He be-
came a full professor in 1984 
and earned the position of chair in 1990.
He read his doctoral thesis, which earned top distinc-
tions, at the Universitat de Barcelona in 1977. With this 
thesis, he began an avenue of research that he would later 
expand and diversify, yet never abandon: the study of the 
civic involvement of intellectuals in contemporary Catalo-
nia, whom he has called “intellectuals -professionals”, that 
is, the civil servants of the Catalan regional state. In 1978, he 
published a summary of his thesis in the journal Recerques, 
and in 1980 the publishing house Curial issued it under the 
title of Jaume Bofill i Mates, 1878-1933: l’adscripció social i 
l’evolució política. The previous year he had published and 
analysed a seminal text by Bofill i Mates, Prat de la Riba i la 
cultura catalana, in the prestigious collection “Antologia 
Catalana” put out by Edicions 62.
In 1983, Jordi Casassas became an enthusiastic advocate 
of a major enterprise sponsored by the Diputació de Barce-
lona and published by La Magrana: the “Biblioteca dels 
Clàssics del Nacionalisme Català” (Library of the Classics 
of Catalan Nationalism). He was part of the supervisory 
committee of the collection, in which he wrote the pro-
logues to and edited three works. Of all the members of the 
Library’s management council, he was the one who pub-
lished the most. He was in charge of the 1983 publication of 
Bofill i Mates’ L’Altra Concòrdia i altres textos; of the book 
Una política catalana i altres escrits by the same author in 
1986; and of a compilation of texts by Francesc Cambó en-
titled El catalanisme regeneracionista (1990). He also wrote 
the prologue to and edited Enric Prat de la Riba’s La 
Nacionalitat Catalana in 1992. In 1993, with 32 titles pub-
lished by the “Library of the Classics of Catalan National-
ism”, the Diputació de Barcelona lost interest in the collec-
tion, a situation which remains intact today. Nonetheless, it 
is still a major contribution to the history of Catalan politi-
cal thinking and a critical resource.
In 1986, Jordi Casassas published one of his most impor-
tant individual books: L’Ateneu Barcelonès. Dels seus orí-
gens als nostres dies. Twenty years later, as the leading ex-
pert in the field, he supervised a new collective work on the 
same institution, the Barcelona Athenaeum, entitled 
L’Ateneu i Barcelona, un segle i mig d’acció cultural. In 1990, 
a book of his that is crucial for understanding the past of 
Catalan Historical 6 (Eng).indd   112 25/06/13   11:49
Biographical sketches of the new members of the History-Archaeology Section  Cat. Hist. Rev. 6, 2013   113
outcome of Jordi Casassas’ work in the Tarradellas ar-
chive in Poblet, he wrote the prologue to the publication 
of a resource of enormous value which was issued in two 
volumes by Dau in 2009: Crònica de la Guerra Civil a 
Catalunya: Crònica diària de la Generalitat de Catalunya.
Within the dissemination of the Catalan identity abroad, 
Casassas published Le nationalisme catalan in Paris in 
2004, while domestically, the previous year he had been 
the author of the last part of the last volume of the Història 
de la Generalitat i dels seus presidents, published by Enci-
clopèdia Catalana.
In 2004, Casassas received the Ramon Trias Fargas Prize 
for his book El temps de la nació. Estudis sobre el problema 
de les identitats.
It should be noted that Jordi Casassas is not only an in-
defatigable researcher and promoter of collective publica-
tions, but he also is highly talented at academic adminis-
tration. Between 1999 and 2005, he was in charge of the 
Department of Contemporary History at the Universitat 
de Barcelona for two consecutive appointments. He dealt 
with the problems that arose in such an extensive, hetero-
geneous department both tactfully and effectively.
We should also mention Jordi Casassas’ more recent 
books. With Francisco Gracia and Josep M. Fullola he wrote 
the part on the 19th century restoration of the Universitat de 
Barcelona until 1931 within the book accompanying the ex-
hibition La Universitat de Barcelona. Libertas perfundet om-
nia luce, which was held in 2008. The following year, another 
collective publication that he promoted was issued: Les iden-
titats a la Catalunya contemporània. And finally, that same 
year Afers publishing house issued his individual book that is 
perhaps the richest in original ideas, a work that is equally the 
outcome of archival research and interpretative synthesis: La 
Fàbrica de les Idees: política i cultura a la Catalunya del segle 
xx. It is a mature work in which Casassas writes not only as a 
historian but also as an intellectual committed to the prob-
lems of his society above and beyond partisanship and preju-
dices, and instead with an eye on the future of his country.
It would be impossible to list all of Jordi Casassas’ book 
chapters, scholarly articles and talks at conferences. How-
ever, we should not fail to mention two books that combine 
both research and synthesis which do not fall within his 
principal avenues of research but which do give an idea of 
his ability to address the most diverse topics, namely La 
Companyia Transatlàntica (1987), written with Santiago 
Riera i Tuèbols, and Història de la Federació Catalana de 
Caixes d’Estalvi (2008), of which he is the sole author.
With regard to the IEC, Jordi Casassas has participated 
in some of its most prominent activities. He was one of the 
writers of the first report on history research in Catalonia 
and presented lectures at the symposium on “Puig i Cada-
falch i la Catalunya contemporània” (2001) and at the sym-
posium entitled “Història de la historiografia catalane” 
(2003). He has also just completed work on the Història de 
la Generalitat de Catalunya, published by the IEC.
Albert Balcells
Catalanism before its early electoral successes was issued by 
La Magrana: Entre Escil·la i Caribdis: el catalanisme i la 
Catalunya conservadora de la segona meitat del segle xix.
In addition to the aforementioned works, in 1983 he 
published a compilation of documents about the Primo 
de Rivera dictatorship with Anthropos publishing house. 
With other authors, including Josep Termes, he contrib-
uted to the book El nacionalisme com a ideologia. Three 
years later, he and Termes co-authored the book El futur 
del catalanisme. Both were published by Proa.
Throughout the 1990s, Jordi Casassas was asked to su-
pervise numerous collective publications, including the 
eighth volume of Història, política, societat i cultura dels 
Països Catalans, a publication of Enciclopèdia Catalana. 
Of this entire work, he supervised the part devoted to the 
period 1900-1930. Another collective book that he planned 
and supervised was Els intel·lectuals i el poder a Catalun-
ya, 1808-1975: Materials per a un assaig d’història cultural 
del món català contemporani. Casassas contributed to this 
book along with twelve other authors; in fact, he had su-
pervised most of their doctoral theses, and the majority of 
them were part of the extensive circle that revolved 
around him, namely the Group of Studies on the History 
of Culture and Intellectuals, GEHCI. This group not only 
organised regular meetings and debates, but in 1998 it 
also issued a journal called Cercles, revista d’història cul-
tural, fifteen issues of which have been published to date, 
each of them increasingly extensive in length. It is pub-
lished by the Universitat de Barcelona.
Since 1998, Casassas has promoted exchanges and shared 
history through the Mediterranean Network of Cultural 
History, which by 2011 had held fourteen working sessions 
with the participation of Italian, French and Greek histori-
ans. The issues examined at these symposia, which always 
encompass the entire European Mediterranean region in 
the 19th and 20th centuries, include the clash between de-
mocracy and dictatorship, national identity, cultural elites 
and political modernisation, the role of the press in cultural 
modernisation and intellectuals and dictatorships.
In 2001, Casassas was asked by the Generalitat to serve 
as the curator and scriptwriter for the travelling exhibi-
tion entitled Catalunya, terra d’acollida, which travelled 
from Barcelona to Madrid, Valladolid, Santiago de Com-
postela, Badajoz, Seville and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. 
It was an effort to give a positive, not distorted, image of 
Catalonia to the rest of Spain, as well as its own citizens. 
The show spotlighted an open vision of Catalanism based 
on recent history. Related to this effort, in 2006 Casassas 
published the book Cataluña y la España plural. Discursos 
políticos, a compilation of texts from 1901 to 1991.
In 2003, another extremely important Casassas book 
was published which stemmed from an exhibition at 
Barcelona’s Centre de Cultura Contemporània that Casassas 
oversaw. The book was entitled Josep Tarradellas o la 
reivindicació de la memòria. That same year, a seminal 
collective publication was issued which Casassas co-su-
pervised: Diccionari d’historiografia catalana. As a direct 
Catalan Historical 6 (Eng).indd   113 25/06/13   11:49


Biographical sketches of the new members of teh History-Archaeology Section

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert