“Instruction will made us free, association will made us strong, and love will made us happy”

We introduce ourselves

Welcome to the website of the Universitat Progressista d’Estiu, UPEC.
UPEC (Summer Progressive University of Catalonia) was born on November 11, 2004, driven by a group of people committed to left-wing policies and linked to the social, intellectual, political and academic spheres, in response to the need to fill a void in terms of pluralistic debate scenarios in the progressive sectors of Catalonia.

Heirs of the aspirations of the Catalan popular classes from nineteenth century

The people of the Universitat Progressista d’Estiu de Catalunya, we declare ourselves to be heirs of the aspirations of the Catalan popular classes from nineteenth century, embodied in their old motto “Instruct and you will be free, associate and you will be strong, love and you will be happy”. Heirs of the effort made by the Republican spring in the 1930s when it was announced: “Culture above all. There will be nothing left of the civic effort of our days without the pressure of an environment that leads us all through the warmest ways of intelligence”. And heirs of the social and political anti-Franco opposition that succeeded in rebuilding democratic reason in our country. Our aim is that the legacy of the past continues to weave our present into the future.

Exchange space for social transformation

UPEC creates a space of exchange between speakers and participants that combines reflection and learning in order to make proposals for the challenges facing Catalonia. In this way the objective is to put the bases to build a better society by social transformation. Likewise, the progressive university contributes to strengthen the mechanisms of diffusion, reflection and elaboration of the Catalan left culture and ideas.

The UPEC teaching program has two basic characteristics:

  • Contribute to the development of a left democratic culture.
  • Contribute to the analysis of the public policies and their result towards the popular classes from a strategic perspective aimed at the hegemony of the left.

The UPEC website

The year 2017 we inaugurated the website with the following objectives:

To make accessible to all, with a single click, what we have created throughout more than a decade of conferences about reflection, debate and exchange, and how that has contributed to create the present political, cultural and intellectual space in Catalonia. So we invite you to browse the documentary background, to consult our publications, the speakers who have accompanied us… You can do it through our search engine or the historic papers section.

Provide all necessary information about our current and future activities. And for those who cannot attend, we will tell you all that happens.

At the moment this space offers the information in Catalan.

We invite you to visit it, to enjoy it, and to contact us at info@upec.cat for any questions or comments.

2017 MEETING

The XIII edition of UPEC Meeting will take place on July 5, 6 and 7 at the CC OO Auditorium, Via Laietana, 16 Barcelona.

The 2017 edition is inspired by the famous sentence of Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.” To make it simple we have adapted it, so this year’s motto will be “In the interval monsters emerge”.

We organize these thirteenth meeting amid dark-light. We have hopes, but we also are afraid because we are living in a crossroads. This UPEC Meeting will be held in decisive and exciting moments of politics, politics in capital letters: national challenges and social challenges on the horizon.

You can check all the information here (catalan).