Geografia vital de Llorenç Soldevila

10/01/2025 to 16/02/2025
Centre d'Estudis Argentonins

Opening of the exhibition in tribute to the founder of the Centre d'Estudis Argentonins, Llorenç Soldevila, followed by an intervention by Ricard Giramé-Parareda, who will talk about Llorenç Soldevila as one of the main scholars of Catalan literature.

Opening January 10 at 7:00 p.m.
Exhibition from January 10 to February 16, 2025

The exhibition is a tribute to the life and work of Llorenç Soldevila i Balart (Monistrol 1950 – Argentona 2022), master and scholar of Catalan literature. The exhibition, in addition to remembering the figure of Soldevila, aims to underline his commitment to the preservation and dissemination of Catalan culture and his unique vision of a cultural geography rooted in the literature of the Catalan Countries.

This is a montage that can be divided into two parts. On the one hand, Soldevila's life journey begins in his native town of Monistrol de Montserrat, where he founded the group and the magazine Art i Esplai, the first platform for the defense of the Catalan language and culture. It continues his journey through Terrassa, where he worked as a professor at the Blanxart Research Institute and promoted initiatives such as the literary prize El somriure del gat and the first literary routes with students. Another section is dedicated to his establishment in Argentona, where he founded the Centre d'Estudis Argentonins Jaume Clavell and promoted activities such as Tardor Literària and the creation of the magazine Fonts. In this context, Soldevila turned Argentona into a cultural reference point, thanks to his ability to attract great names in Catalan literature. The exhibition also highlights his contribution to Mataró where, in addition to participating in the Municipal Board of Culture, he taught for two decades at the Institut Alexandre Satorras. During this time, he designed literary routes for secondary schools, and cultural activities that integrated geography and literature, as well as the creation of pedagogical material to promote active learning of literature.

The second axis of the exhibition is the Literary Geography of the Catalan Countries project, an ambitious twelve-volume work that connects authors and literary spaces with the Catalan, Balearic, Valencian, Andorran and fringe territories. All this work that Soldevila did from the University of Vic, is complemented by the website Endrets.cat, which allows you to expand the contents of the books and follow literary routes online as well as consult texts related to the places and authors. Soldevila developed this project with meticulous research work, photographic documentation and an extensive network of collaborators.

«Some notes on Llorenç Soldevila and his posterity» by Ricard Giramé-Parareda

Ricard Giramé-Parareda is a doctoral student and researcher in the «Literature and cultural studies» line in the GLOSSA group at the University of Vic. His thesis, on the literary elements in the identity of the Verdaguer brand, was promoted and co-directed by Llorenç Soldevila, who was his teacher and mentor. He has participated in more than a dozen international conferences and congresses and is the author of several publications on this topic. Together with Soldevila, he was responsible for the materialization of the literary routes made from the «Endrets» project —of which Soldevila was the main researcher— and is currently the content coordinator of the portal www.endrets.cat. Also, together with Llorenç Soldevila, he was the editorial coordinator of the Literary Geography of the Catalan Countries, and recently, together with other colleagues in the team, he has been in charge of editing the volume of Andorra and preparing the last volume of the collection, the one dedicated to Les frangers: l’Alguer, Catalunya del Nord i Ponent.

Ricard Giramé-Parareda
Research Group in Applied Linguistics, Didactics and Literature
Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya