Maria del Mar Bonet and Alícia Casals to receive the Xarxa Vives' Medal of Honour at the UAB

The General Council of the Xarxa Vives d’Universitats, made up of the rectors of 22 member universities, will be awarding a Medal of Honour to engineer Alícia Casals and singer and songwriter Maria del Mar Bonet. The awards ceremony will take place on Tuesday 12 July at 12 noon at the Rectorat building of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

The event will be inaugurated by the current president of the Vives Network of Univerisities and rector of the UAB, Javier Lafuente Sancho. Following his speech, the IV Jesús Tuson Language Diversity Award, as well as the IV Joan Lluís Vives University Press Award, will be granted to this year's winners. 

This will then be followed by the awarding of the Medal of Honour to engineer Alícia Casals i Gelpí, with a commendatory by Rector Daniel Crespo Artiaga from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Finally, the second Medal of Honour will be awarded to singer and songwriter Maria del Mar Bonet i Verdaguer, with a commendatory by Rector Amparo Navarro Faure from the University of Alacant. And before ending the event, UAB Rector and President of the Vives Network of Universities Javier Lafuente Sancho will give a brief speech.

The event is open to the public. Those interested in attending must sign up here.

Alícia Casals i Gelpí (Barcelona, 1955) is industrial engineer and computer technician, and professor of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). In 1977, she graduated in Industrial Engineering and in 1983, she received her PhD in Computer Science. In 1978, she began to work as a lecturer at the UPC, and since 1991 she is professor in Computer Architecture and Technology at the Department of Automatic Control.

She has worked on smart robotics with applications for healthcare as director fot hte Robotics Programme at the Bioengineering Institute of Catalonia and has conducted projects and developed prototypes of roboticised systems to help the disabled and in surgical interventions. She became a member of the Institute for Catalan Studies in 2007 and is president of the Science and Technology section since 2019. She also has presided numerous international congresses on experimental robotics and was vice president of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society (2008-2009) and president of the Technical Committee on Biorobotics of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (2016-2017).

Throughout her career, she has been awarded several prizes and distinctions, such as the Barcelona International Science and Technology Prize (1992), Barcelona City Technology Prize (1996) and the Narcís Monturiol Medal for scientific and technological merits from the Government of Catalonia (1998).

Maria del Mar Bonet (Palma, 1947) is a singer and songwriter specialising in traditional music from the Mediterranean. She was a member of the group Els Setze Jutges, and became one of the members of the Nova Cançó artistic movement with the most solid and lengthy career. With a vast expressiveness and richly timbered voice, her music demonstrates to be deeply rooted in the culture of her Balearic Islands, and particularly in Mallorca. Although her first great hit was the protest song Què volen aquesta gent? (1968), with lyrics by Lluís Serrahima, in general her songs focus on poetic contents, with a highly intimate intensity and often a great sensual elation.

Her lyrics have a three-fold origin: Mediterranena folklore (particularly Balearic, which marked her first albums and remains strongly present even today), personal lyrics and the works of poets from all over the Catalan-speaking regions, including Bartomeu Rosselló-Pòrcel, Joan Alcover and Vicent Andrés i Estellés, among many others. Throughout her career, she has worked with several famous artists, such as Lluís Llach, Raimon, Marina Rossell and Joan Manuel Serrat, and very particularly with Francesc Pi de la Serra, Rafael Subirachs and the Valencian group Al Tall, both when recording and when performing live.

Among the many awards she has received are the Saint George Cross from the Government of Catalonia (1984), the Ciutat de Mallorca Gold Medal (2004), the Barcelona Gold Medal (2006) and the Balearic Islands Gold Medal (2017).