On the first day of January, trying to close my reflections on the past year and formulate my resolutions for the new one, I received the very sad news that Rafael Entrena Cuesta, a teacher, a friend and a great person, has left us.
Rafael Entrena was born in Granada on August 5, 1932. After brilliantly completing his Law studies, he extended them in Edinburgh and obtained a doctorate in Law at the Real Colegio Mayor de los Españoles in Bologna. It was then, at the age of 27, the youngest law professor in Spain, he went on to occupy the chair of Administrative Law at the University of La Laguna, to later occupy the chair at the University of Barcelona, where he already developed throughout his fruitful and brilliant university career.
As a teacher, he trained many generations of law graduates, whom he surprised in class when he asked them by their first names. Author of a reference administrative law manual, he was also the author of numerous publications of singular value in his discipline and gave multiple lectures at universities, both Spanish and foreign.
The teaching activity made it compatible with an outstanding practice of law, a profession that his father and also his brother Ramón had already practiced. Today, a son and two granddaughters continue this line of lawyers.
When he arrived in Barcelona he married Isabel Fabré, his inseparable companion, with whom he formed a large family with four children, Rafa, Jorge, Javier and Guillermo and nine grandchildren, whose family with all justice felt deeply proud. He took root in Catalonia and spent long seasons in Port de la Selva and Palol de Revardit. He also liked to go with his wife to spend days off in the Canary Islands, in memory of his university beginnings.
The academic and professional merits are undoubtedly many. But those of us who have had the good fortune to have known him personally and to have enjoyed his friendship remember in a special way that he was a great person. A person of deep culture, but above all an affable, tolerant, generous, brilliant, witty in conversation and extraordinarily polite person.
He never desired honors or public office, although he did not decline to exercise public responsibilities when required. He was Dean of the Faculty of Law, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Barcelona and Deputy Mayor of Urbanism at Barcelona City Council. From this last position he played an important role in bringing the Miró Foundation to Barcelona. In 1972 he was awarded the Cross of Honor of the Order of Sant Ramon de Penyafort.
At the university, in the positions he held and within Catalan society, he always tried to favor dialogue and agreements. He did not discriminate against anyone because of their ideas or favor those who did not deserve it.
He also knew how to enjoy life. He practiced cycling and was unbeatable in the pediment of his home in Palol. He liked to walk and, as he said, smell the countryside. A football fan, he was a member of Barça and Espanyol, although his preferences were for the second of these teams. In his last years he spent long hours reading the classics, in which, he said, everything was already written.
This great man, this person, as the poet said, in the good sense of the word good, has left us after a full and fruitful life. His memory will remain alive among his thousands of students and particularly among those of us who had the privilege of enjoying his friendship.
