El Mestre Ramon Torroja i Valls : carta des de la presó = Teacher Ramon Torroja i Valls : a letter from jail

Abstract

Nationalist rebels against the Republican regime occupied Catalonia in 1939, causing the exodus of thousands of people to France, including more than 10% of all the male and female teachers in the country. This exodus was spurred by Catalonia's border with France. Yet, not everyone decided to leave as Franco's army approached; some democrats with Republican ideals thought it would be possible to keep on living in the country, although the conditions would not be optimal. However, cold reality would demonstrate that falsity of that hope. The prisons filled up and one of those who was jailed was a teacher and the director of the Catalan Generalitat's Aneja de la Normal school, Ramon Torroja Valls, one of the most prominent (and lamentably little known) figures in pedagogy, thanks to his work in education as well as his influence on a number of future teachers imprisoned in Barcelona's Modelo prison in 1939. Torroja i Valls sent a letter to his daughter Núria for her anniversary in 1940, explaining what life was like inside the penitentiary, a text whose interest stems from its authorship by a champion of civic and cultural morality who acutely experienced the human and moral degradation of hard confinement in a prison during the early years of the Franco regime.