El Mestre Ramon Torroja i Valls : carta des de la presó = Teacher Ramon Torroja i Valls : a letter from jail

Nationalist rebels against the Republican regime occupied Catalonia in 1939,
causing the exodus of thousands of people to France, including more than 10% of all
the male and female teachers in the country. This exodus was spurred by Catalonias
border with France.
Yet, not everyone decided to leave as Francos army approached; some democrats
with Republican ideals thought it would be possible to keep on living in the country,
although the conditions would not be optimal. However, cold reality would demonstrate
that falsity of that hope.
The prisons filled up and one of those who was jailed was a teacher and the director
of the Catalan Generalitats Aneja de la Normal school, Ramon Torroja Valls, one
of the most prominent (and lamentably little known) figures in pedagogy, thanks to
his work in education as well as his influence on a number of future teachers imprisoned
in Barcelonas Modelo prison in 1939. Torroja i Valls sent a letter to his daughter
Núria for her anniversary in 1940, explaining what life was like inside the penitentiary,
a text whose interest stems from its authorship by a champion of civic and cultural
morality who acutely experienced the human and moral degradation of hard
confinement in a prison during the early years of the Franco regime.