Description
When you enter the Sant Jordi Hall of the Palau de la Generalitat, if you raise your head, it is very likely that the first figure you see painted on the ceiling is that of Balmes. There are also those of Torras y Bages (opposite to the one of Balmes), Llorens and Beard, Menéndez Pelayo, et cetera. But the one of Balmes emphasizes by the place that occupies. As is well known, the current murals were painted during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera to replace the frescoes of Torres García novecentistas, which was little successful in showing the essentially Spanish nature of the Catalan spirit and the contributions he had made to the Nation. Well, today, when one enters the Hall and contemplates the portrait of Balmes, up there, presiding over the central part of the ship, they assault him over two questions. First: if today it is necessary to re-decorate the ceiling of the Hall, the artist or institution would paint thinkers? Second: if the Hall were to be remodeled and the decision was taken to remove or start the current frescoes, what would be the picture of Balmes? The observation about the Sant Jordi Hall and the resulting concerns help us to characterize the delicate situation that today maintains Catalan culture with the legacy and the figure of Jaume Balmes. But they also help us to see the relationship that contemporary Catalan culture maintains with nineteenth-century philosophical thinking. All this, in some way, is what he wanted to address at the Trias Symposium that took place on November 23 and 24, 2016 in Vic. The book he has in his hands is the witness.
