Salomó (Mon) Marquès i Sureda was born in l’Escala but his heart belongs to Girona. He is a teacher of teachers and a profoundly ethical man. In his life and career we find scouting and the seminary, where he studied philosophy and theology. He served as a priest in Cassà and Collell but left the priesthood in 1974. He taught the first promotion at the UAB, where he lectured in the introduction to the sciences of education and other subjects. He was awarded a doctorate cum laude with an extraordinary prize. He worked hard on the project to create the University of Girona, of which he is professor emeritus. He was Dean of the Faculty of Education Sciences at the University of Girona, where he was Professor of the History of Education. He was president of GRAMC, supported and worked with the Institut de Ciències de l’Educació and has been a member of Justícia i Pau since its inception.
He has written numerous articles in magazines and has published many books, a large proportion produced collectively. They include: ¿Qué es la pedagogía? Una respuesta actual (1985, with Jaime Sarramona; L’exili dels Mestres (1997); Els mestres de la República (2006) and Mare de Déu quina escola! (2008), these two last with Raimon Portell, and he has directed some twenty doctoral theses. After he received the Thirteenth Mestres 68 Award, Xavier Besalú wrote a first version of his biography. He has also received the Jaume Vicens Vives Award from the Government of Catalonia. He has always worked to defend human rights and to recover historical memory, especially of the paths of exile. Lastly. we may say that, even though he is an eminent pedagogue, a highly humane and charitable person, an expert on education and exile, a tireless walker and hiker with a voracious hunger for sweets and for life, he is also a simple, kind man.
LiberPress Camins Award 2014
Mon Marquès received the LiberPress Camins Award for his personal qualities and pedagogical career, which has opened up paths of erudition, rigour and sensitivity to so many students and teachers; because he has recovered so much, worked with, taught and mentored so many people, young and old, showing them the painful paths of exile, the paths of retreat, paths of memory, ways to look at what we are like and where we are, where we came from and where many of the best went. For helping us to discover, learn and walk, and search for a much better world and a more caring, free and independent country.