🎓 Roca and Bonet, two honorary doctorates of the generation of concord

The University has conferred honorary doctorates on the President of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and Honorary President of Freixenet, José Luis Bonet Ferrer, and the Counsel of the Spanish Constitution and Honorary President of the Roca Junyent law firm, Miquel Roca Junyent.

The University awarded them the highest academic consideration that a university can grant. The investiture as honorary doctors of Bonet and Roca takes place in the context of celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Abat Oliba CEU as a university institution.

Alimentaria: Internationalization and Innovation

In his acceptance speech, the President of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, José Luis Bonet, stressed the importance of trade fairs and Chambers of Commerce as public institutions based on entrepreneurs and managers in which the value of public-private cooperation is exemplified and whose role in promoting the economy and the development of the country is decisive. “In a country of SMEs like Spain, the work of trade fairs in terms of innovation and the internationalization of companies is fundamental”, José Luis Bonet said, referring to Alimentaria, the Fira de Barcelona international food fair, which he himself chaired between 2002 and 2022 and which he considers “a reflection of the diversity of Spanish gastronomy”.

For Bonet, Alimentaria is “one of the most important instruments available to the Spanish agri-food sector” due to its ability to respond to its needs “by helping SMEs to establish contacts with importers, commercial agents and distributors from all over the world to export more and better”. Bonet concluded by referring to the Fira de Barcelona international food fair as “a success that belongs to Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain, and to its agri-food sector, which is a winning sector in the world”.

“Addicted to the Values of the Constitution”

Miquel Roca’s speech focused on the role that law must play in society. In an academic context, he referred to the need to “explain law”, because “ignoring the rights and freedoms proclaimed by our legal system invites us to disrespect them” and because “only by knowing one’s own rights is it possible to understand why one should respect the rights of others”. He argued that society as a whole must be imbued with the value of defending and preserving law. When this value is “minimized or trivialized”, history shows that “discord and confrontation are inevitable”.

These ideas connected naturally with a fundamental part of Roca’s biography, which is his role as Counsel of the Spanish Constitution, which is why “you have called me here today”. “I feel very honoured by this association, and even more so at a time when I think it is very opportune to reiterate the defence of the Constitution and its values”, he proclaimed.

These are values to which he has confessed to being “addicted” and which are condensed in the notion of consensus, expressed in the will “to agree and disagree”. It was about “not only respecting difference but making difference possible”. Even today, when we hear voices that “propose new objectives that do not coexist well with the values that we all enshrined in 1978”, it is necessary to remember that “it is precisely these values that protect the free expression of these objectives”. In short, Roca’s speech was a vindication of that country that learned to live with freedom and respect, at a time, like the present, in which there are days that “make us believe that we will once again let ourselves be tempted by the genetics of confrontation and discord”.

Two key men in public life

Juan Corona, Professor of Applied Economics at the University and Honorary Rector, presented Bonet Ferrer’s merits to be invested as doctor honoris causa. In his ‘laudatio’ he referred to Bonet’s academic and business side and to a vocation of service that he keenly develops from his position as president of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce.

Roca Junyent’s ‘laudatio’ was delivered by Carlos Pérez del Valle, Professor of Criminal Law and also Honorary Rector of our University. He highlighted Roca’s almost genetic proximity to the political sphere and his attachment to his role as a jurist, a facet that marked his way of acting in public life. This happened when, at only 37 years old, he formed part of the Constitutional Committee, where he acted as “a jurist convinced of the prevailing mission of law”.

The ceremony concluded with speeches by the Rector, Rafael Rodríguez-Ponga, and the Grand Chancellor of the University and President of the CEU educational group, Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza. The latter highlighted Roca’s decisive role “as one of the seven counsels of the Constitution, whose longevity is explained by the spirit that inspired it, that of harmony among Spaniards”. Reference was made to Bonet’s 50-year career at the university, as well as his work as a businessman at the head of Freixenet. From this experience between the working and the academic worlds, Bullón de Mendoza highlighted his “proposal for the reform of education, which should be based on the value of effort”.

In a similar vein, Rector Rodríguez-Ponga pointed out that these honorary doctorates also represent recognition “of a generation that moved towards a collective project of peace and coexistence”. And he called for the Spanish society of the Transition to be taken as an example: “we can build new consensuses, let us follow their example”.