Eleven years after retiring, Josep Olives Puig, the first dean of the Faculty of Humanities, one of the founding faculties of UIC Barcelona, visited us on 11 January, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of both UIC Barcelona and the Faculty of Humanities. Invited by the current dean of the Faculty, Judith Urbano, and accompanied by his wife Lizette, he had a discussion with the current teaching staff at the University and was very excited about being able visit again on what was his home for the first ten years of its existence: “The best gift from the Kings,” he said when he arrived.

Josep Olives is a person who always smiles and has grey hair. With eighty years behind him, one would say that he is the same now as he was when he left the University. It’s as if time has stood still; he radiates the same vitality and serenity.

He is enthusiasm and passion embodied, which spreads to everyone who listens to him, on this occasion, a group of teachers, mainly from the Faculty that he led at when UIC Barcelona was just beginning. Speaking of humanities, of course; but also, of sciences, and religion… of and life, in the end. Because, according to Olives, “the humanities have no borders, since they lead us to understand our own way of being.”

For this reason, the colloquium that took place in the University’s Saló de Graus was very endearing, pleasant and enjoyable. Attending were professors who were enthusiasts and battle companions, such as Montserrat Nebrera, Josep Corcó, Xavier Escribano or Magda Bosch, and others from second or third “wave”, such as Bernat Torres, and even students who listened to Olives’ master lessons in the Aula Magna and who are now teachers themselves, such as Isabel Morales.

Receiving Josep Olives at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya eleven years after he retired, when UIC is celebrating its first quarter of a century, is a celebration all its own. With times to laugh and to be serious. But the seriousness that makes you think. Because, after all, what the humanist wants is to think and to make people think. Here, then, is the paradox that Professor Olives shared, encouraging us to live and experience the humanities, “Ignorance is more important than knowing. Ignorance is an integral part of all of us: it is part of our being, it is our divine dimension, and that is very serious, because it coexists with the part that knows.”

Olives was dean of the Faculty of Humanities from 1997 to 2011. So, from this Faculty, in all degree programmes, both in humanities and sciences, he taught Thought and Thinking that, as the words indicate, made you think about life: he talked about philosophy, anthropology, religion… It was the essence of the humanities in its pure state, and genesis, of the current Interdisciplinary Centre for Thought (CIP), which today, actually brings together those cross-disciplinary subjects that are taught in all degree programmes. Olives talked about the CIP with the current director of the Centre, Andrea Rodríguez Prat, and before leaving, he greeted the rector, Alfonso Méndiz, and found that UIC Barcelona still has the humanistic essence it had the first day; its DNA is alive and well.