On the road again.....take 2: Spain

Christmas draws near and I have started with a bit of travel. Most of the time I go straight to a family home, where depends on how many days off I have. But on occasion, especially if I am staying on the European side of the Atlantic, I take advantage of being back in Spain to visit friends from Uni, most of whom live in northern Spain. Recovery from all the viruses I managed to pick up in November can continue here, though I felt recovered enough to travel. 

This particular time I have been on a bit of a mission that has led to an unexpected nostalgic tour of my old undergrad uni.  While I have studied at several universities since, the Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain continues to have a special place in my heart. It is in so many ways home, truly alma mater, because it was the first place I was on my own, it was a very safe space in which to experience those first years of adult independence and freedom.

While there I saw old friends from undergrad days and I meandered around the city centre and the university campus. I saw almost with fresh eyes a really beautiful city that I had come to know so well. As happens with all of us, the familiarity meant that in my final few months there I was too busy to notice the city as I did this time around. There were many special moments, some things have changed some remain the same, there is something comforting about seeing this dynamism running parallel to continuity. One of those special moments was visiting an old professor of mine, Jaime Nubiola, he is now near retirement, and age has come on, making him even more tenderhearted than he was. He is a wonderful mentor, much loved by all his students, and we have stayed in touch over the years. He was my philosophy teacher and taught me so much both about philosophy and life that has stayed with me. He gifted me two books he published in the last couple of years, one of which I began on the train ride to Valladolid today. It is a collection of short biographies of what he calls "thinkers at the borders", his way of highlighting for us all the deep and necessary connection there is between faith and culture (art, poetry, music, etc). And also for those at the university, it is a reminder that 

the university should be first a place that forms the whole person. Something so very much lost in today's universities, which are focused almost exclusively on teaching students a profitable trade. But happiness in this life does not come solely from economic endeavour or success, instead, this is simply a means for covering the material needs that can allow us to pursue that which fills out the whole being. But to know what satisfies this desire for completeness people need a holistic formation and education, one that takes into account their souls. The university, very much following Newman, needs to recover this is a true vocation in this world, of being a place that seeks Truth and thinks deeply about the fundamental questions of life. A place where all that go to it learn how to think and seek Truth. My undergrad uni is very much that, that is its main mission under all the things that it does, this lies at its roots and I most definitely benefitted from having studied there.

" Passion for Truth is characterised by radical solidarity. The idea that we can advance in knowledge in total isolation is an Enlightenment and Romantic illusion. We receive true knowledge from others and pass it on to others. We share it in a live community that constantly tests out and rectified this knowledge. The Univerity is thus a school of solidarity."

Alejandro Llano