The professor of Psychology and current rector Joan Guàrdia was re-elected this Tuesday to his position at the University of Barcelona after having won the elections for the rectorate with 65.89% of the weighted vote, compared to the 34.11% achieved by the other candidate and only rival, Eugeni Graugés, dean of the Faculty of Physics.
The largest Catalan campus has held these elections a year ahead of schedule, since Guàrdia decided to advance them because the ordinary calendar, as he himself explained, “coincided with the closure of important projects, such as the expansion of the Clínic hospital or the campus of Bellvitge.”
In his first speech as elected rector, Guàrdia wanted to thank this Tuesday for the support of all university groups and has committed to making “a bigger and better University of Barcelona.”
Guàrdia renews his mandate, this time for six years – due to the changes in the LOSU – to be able to consolidate these plans and promote the pending ones. One of his objectives is to improve the financing that comes from the administrations to increase the workforce. In his electoral program, he also plans to invest more in the maintenance and renovation of buildings, especially in the faculties of Fine Arts and Pharmacy.
More than 54,877 people from different university groups were called to vote. 6,904 voters voted, which corresponds to 12.58% of the total census.
On December 18, 2020, Joan Guàrdia Olmos obtained 54.28% of the weighted vote in the second round of the elections, being the first time she ran, then against Joan Elias. He is a professor of Behavioral Sciences Methodology at the Faculty of Psychology and an expert in statistics and the systematic study of human behavior. He has been a teacher in the Faculty of Psychology, but also in those of Pharmacy, Economics and Business, Geography and History, Nursing, Education and Biology, and has published more than 30 books and more than 260 scientific articles.
