Història de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Vol. II: De 1942 als temps recents

2007, 506 pp.

This volume is the continuation to the first of the history of the Institute of Catalan Studies published in December 2002. The previous volume studied the finalities of the work and of the organisation of the Institute until the end of the Civil War (1936 – 1939). Here the author takes from where he left it: the refoundation of IEC (May 1942) in Josep Puig i Cadafalch’s house by those surviving members who were not forced to exile. Deprived of its venue, its resources and of any official support, the institute managed to survive and soon became an undeniable reference of cultural anti-fascism resistance, at the same time it re-established the international academic links after the end of WWII. There were thirty-eight years of precariousness and narrowness, of which the first twenty, at least, the Institute was threatened and forced to a public clandestinely even though the efforts to recover the premises and recognition began well soon. Without the efforts and fidelity of its members the IEC would not have subsisted, nor without the financial support of private sponsorship. But the chronic failure of the means available to the IEC reduced the scope of his work for more than three and a half decades. Despite this, it was in the period from 1942 to 1960, when Catalan language and culture were more marginalised by the dictatorship, that the role of the institute had more relevance as a nucleus of relationship between scholars and as a point of reference in the interior and abroad and witnessing that the culture in the Catalan language had not died.