CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA Ricard Pié* The increase in the number of publicly funded universities in Catalonia, the emergence of four private universi- ties, the major urban impact on the cities of Girona, Lleida, Reus, Tarragona and Vic as a result of the implantation of their respective universities, together with demographic factors such as the decline in the higher education population, as well as the need to rationalise the present map of universities in Catalonia, call for a considered appraisal of the relationship between the university and the region, as well as the relevance of that relationship to regional and academic restructuring policies affecting Catalan universities in the future. Contents 1. The university and its surrounding region 2. The founding of the medieval university, an urban phenomenon 3. The crisis of the traditional university model and the re-founding of the university as a temple of knowledge 4. The American experience: from rural college to mass university 5. The university as a motor of regional development 6. Spanish universities and their struggle for renewal 7. The difficult years, from the Spanish Civil War to the coming of democracy 8. The explosion of the university map in Spain under the new autonomous regions 9. The genesis of today’s university map in Catalonia 10. Some questions concerning the Catalan university map in relation to the differential value of region * Ricard PIÉ is an architect and senior lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia 16 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA 1. The university and its to be an urban phenomenon which arose as it be- surrounding region came necessary to find an open, concurrent space of freedom for the advance of knowledge. Monasteries There are many dimensions to the debate on the role were good places for the gathering and conservation of the university campus within the region. This role of knowledge, but they were also too closed for a soci- will be influenced not only by the specific conditions ety which was undergoing a transformation and of the physical space in which the university evolves, which was eager for education and knowledge. This but also by the way in which the given institution con- shift from the monastery to the city did not entail any rift ceives its academic, social and research activities in between the two, but rather came about gradually relation to its surrounding area. In a globalised world, during the 12th and 13th centuries. By the 13th centu- in which the universitas must provide a space for the ry, there were thirteen universities in Europe; among cultivation of universal culture, a reflection on knowl- them were those of Paris, founded in 1170, Oxford, edge considered from the perspective of the region founded in 1214, Cambridge, founded in 1229, and and its conditions will add value to the debate, intro- Salamanca, founded in 1230. ducing the specific characteristics of each individual place as a differential value. The campus can provide During that period, the episcopal and monastic not only the physical space in which the university schools in the majority of European countries came carries out its activities, but also a space of relation- under papal protection. In the case of the kingdoms ships generating knowledge and specificity. of Castile and Aragon, where they came under the authority of the crown, they were transferred to the The aim of this text is to carry out just such a reflection, cities and endowed with extraterritorial status – beginning with the history of the university and con- which they retain to this day as one of the funda- cluding with a number of considerations on the case mental attributes of the university and its right of ac- of Catalonia, with a view to furthering the debate and ademic freedom – which guaranteed them sufficient contributing to a discussion of the future. Our intention autonomy to achieve their objectives. The founding is to transcend the purely architectural and town-plan- and genesis of the individual universities followed di- ning aspects in order to evaluate some of the chal- verse paths and was, from a planning point of view, lenges posed in relation to the university, as well as the quite different. In some cases, it was the result of a problems and concerns of interest to the society with change in the statutes of the episcopal schools; in which the university shares a common space. others, it was the result of teachers grouping to- gether and being given the «faculty» to carry out their teaching, while in some cases, it arose from 2. The founding of the medieval students banding together to solve their problems. university, an urban phenomenon The creation of the universities was an act towards Historically speaking, the universities were founded the modernisation of learning and the education of when «learning» passed from the monasteries to the the nobility. The early Middle Ages had been a diffi- heart of the cities. In a sense, the university can be said cult period (which was not overcome, from a territori- 17 CONEIXEMENT I SOCIETAT 04 ARTICLES al point of view, until until a system of cities was con- accordingly, the civil authorities made a concerted ef- solidated which established regional powers and fort to move the study of religious matters to the Uni- paved the way to bourgeois society) during which versity of Paris. Paris offered an urban university mod- the crafts and commercial exchange gradually el in which the university’s own buildings blended and gained ascendancy as the chief economic activities. were integrated into the city as a whole. The district ly- From that moment on, the city became the context ing on the left bank of the Seine –the Latin Quarter– for the new economic activities and provided a grouped together the colleges, forming a dense fabric space for the education and training of the clerics made up of university buildings and those industries and scholars required by the incipient bourgeoisie. related to the university, such as copyists, booksellers, boarding houses and refectories. In Britain, universities adopted a different territorial From a functional point of view, the univer- model, being located outside the capital city in two sity was simultaneously a place in which the small towns not far from London: Oxford and Cam- bridge. Although modelled on Paris, these universi- community both studied and lived, provi- ties bowed to the concerns expressed by various ding a space not only for teaching but also authors of the period that students should be sent for social relations and activities. away from the capital in order to focus them on their studies and shield them from the harmful influences of the city. Pablo Campos, an architect and expert on the history of universities in Spain, illustrates similar The first university was founded in Bologna, in concerns by recalling that King Alfonso X, called the 1088, as a student guild set up to organise studies Learned, of Castile advocated precisely the same and elect a rector. The university was located in a arrangement1 in his Siete Partidas, written between city situated on the route linking the Po valley to 1256 and 1263. In Catalonia, Barcelona’s Consell de Rome. Bologna was a great commercial centre in Cent, the governing institution composed of 100 cit- which civil and canonical law studies flourished in izens, repeatedly opposed the establishment of a the clash between the emerging new mercantile university (the «Estudis Generals») in Barcelona. society, on the one hand, and ecclesiastical law, on the other, which had inherited the rich legacy of Despite the fact that from the outset two such dif- historical knowledge and the bases of Roman law. ferent territorial locations emerged, university build- ings, both in continental Europe and in the British In 1170 the University of Paris (which was to be the Isles, were centred on the monasteries. The univer- model for all universities of the age) opened its doors, sity building of that period, the college, was an in- organised as a fellowship of masters, whose principal ward-looking structure with a central ground-plan, aim was the teaching of theology. The shift in temporal its characteristic feature being the cloister. From a power to the north of Europe meant that Rome would functional point of view, the university was simulta- no longer be the exclusive capital of religious affairs; neously a place in which the community both stud- 1 CAMPOS CALVO-SOTELO (2000), p. 24. 18 THE UNIVERSITY AND THE REGION: AN HISTÒRICAL OVERVIEW AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE OF CATALONIA ied and lived, providing a space not only for teach- ucation. Its recognised status, the strength of its ar- ing but also for social relations and activities. guments, the progressive independence of its activity in relation to the civil authorities, the weight of religious The University of Paris evolved through the found- tradition and the preeminence it gave to theoretical ing and sum total of its colleges, such as that knowledge –particularly in matters of religion and the- founded in 1257 by Louis IX’s chaplain, Robert de ology– over practical knowledge, gradually caused it Sorbon, which gradually spread throughout the ur- to become remote from a society which was just ban fabric. The Latin quarter of the period took the awakening from a state of relative torpor. form of a cluster of colleges comprising various el- ements, which constituted an irregular urban net- From the end of the 17th century (according to sev- work in which the various university institutions eral authors, from the late Middle Ages), a number of were represented by their respective cloisters.