Enric Ucelay-Da Cal facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Enric Ucelay-Da Cal
Born	1948  New York City
Occupation	Historian, university teacher, writer

Enric Ucelay-Da Cal, born in 1948 in New York City, United States, is a well-known historian. He specializes in recent history, especially the history of Catalonia, a region in Spain. He was a top professor at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He also led a research group that studied countries, nations, and how they govern themselves.

Early Life and Education

Enric's parents, Ernesto Guerra Da Cal and Margarita Ucelay, came from Spain. They had to leave their home because of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). His aunt was Matilde Ucelay.

From 1965 to 1969, Enric studied at Bard College in New York City. He earned his first degree in 1969 and received a special scholarship. He then went to University of Columbia in New York City for his advanced studies.

In 1979, he finished his Ph.D. (a high-level university degree) with a paper called Catalan State: Strategies of Separation of Catalan Radical Nationalism and Revolution (1919-1933). For this paper, he talked to many people and found old printed materials. Many official records were not available yet in the 1970s.

In 1972, he moved to Spain to work on his research. Soon after, in 1974, he started teaching at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). To become a permanent professor in Spain, he needed to be a Spanish citizen. So, he earned another degree in history from the University of Barcelona in 1980.

In 1983, he completed another Ph.D. at the UAB. This time, his paper was written in Catalan and focused on a slightly different time period. For this new paper, he visited many archives in different countries like France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. These archives had documents from the 1920s that were not available before.

He became a Spanish citizen in 1983 and was able to get a permanent teaching job. From 1983 to 2021, he was married to Mary Dorsey Boatwright. A special fund, the Fundació Mary Dorsey, was created in her name to support the study of modern history.

University Teaching Career

From 1983 to 1995, Enric Ucelay-Da Cal was a permanent professor of modern history at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. After a public competition, he became a Senior Professor at the same university from 1995 to 2006.

Since 2006, he has been a senior professor of modern history at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. From 2009 to 2013, he worked on a big research project about how countries are built in Latin America.

He also taught as a visiting professor at Duke University in the United States and at Venice International University in Italy. He was also a visiting scholar in Paris, France.

Professor Ucelay-Da Cal guided many students who went on to become important historians. For example, he advised:

• Xavier Casals, who is an expert on Neo-Nazism in Spain.
• David Martinez Fiol, who studied the impact of the First World War in Catalonia.
• Joan Maria Thomàs, a top expert on the Falange movement in Spain.
• Joan Esculies, a growing expert on Catalan nationalism.

He also worked closely with other researchers. For many years, he collaborated with Francisco Veiga, who studies Eastern Europe. More recently, he has worked with Arnau Gonzàlez i Vilalta on books and projects about sensitive topics in Catalan history.

Historical Research and Ideas

Enric Ucelay-Da Cal's work mainly focuses on the recent history of Spain and Catalonia. He studies Spanish nationalism and Catalan nationalism. He also looks at specific topics like the Catalan independence movement, especially the Estat Català group, before and during the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War.

He believes that to understand a country's history, we need to pay more attention to what happens in different regions. He has also studied populism in Spain and how it compares to similar movements in Latin America.

When studying the Spanish Civil War, he suggests using ideas from the study of religion to understand events that are usually seen as only political. He often questions common ideas about modern Spanish history.

See also

In Spanish: Enric Ucelay-Da Cal para niños