The founder and first rector of the Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya, Ricard Torrents Bertrana, has died at the age of 86, the center reported this Sunday. Promoter of the Escola Universitària de Mestres Balmes, the seed of the University of Vic, Torrents was a "visionary" committed to higher education and with a vocation for public service, the university has highlighted in a statement, which has said that his legacy "will endure " in the history of the institution.
The funeral chapel will be installed next Tuesday at the Ronda de Dalt Funeral Home in Barcelona, where the funeral will be held that same day.
Ricard Torrents was born in Folgueroles, in the region of Osona, in 1937. Writer, translator and student of Jacint Verdaguer, Torrents trained at the Vic Seminary (1947-1959), at the Gregorian University (1959-1961), the Institute Bíblico de Rome (1962-1964), the University of Tübingen (1964-1967) and the University of Barcelona (1978-1980).
At the beginning of the 70s of the last century, as director of the College of Sant Miquel dels Sants in Vic, he promoted educational renewal, linked to the Catalan language and pedagogical tradition, and in 1977 he founded the Balmes University School, from which came the driving force behind the University Studies of Vic, which he ran until 1997, when the Parliament recognized them as the University of Vic.
Ricard Torrents was also the founder of the publishing house Eumo (acronym for Escola Universitària de Mestres d'Osona), in which he published an extensive bibliography on Jacint Verdaguer.
In 1996 and 1997 he received the Serra d'Or Critic Award; in 2005 the Carles Rahola prize for essay; in 2007, the Sant Jordi Cross of the Generalitat and the National Prize for Scientific Thought and Culture, and in 2009 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the City of Vic.
