Josep Antoni Balcells: la ambigüedad política de un catedrático de física-química

Abstract

Josep Antoni Balcells was professor of physics and chemistry and head of the College of Pharmacy in Barcelona during its whole existence. He warmly and publicly welcomed the inauguration in 1820 of the constitutional period but later worked openly for its liquidation. This alternation of loyalties brought him difficulties first in the década ominosa and then during Espartero’s regency, that he affronted with some writings in his defence. Working in retrospect from the last of these, a little known booklet entitled Dionisio y Honorato, the authors have described the sequence of events