Author of the children’s play Els Pastorets [The Little Shepherds], Josep Maria Folch i Torres was one of Catalonia’s most prominent novelists and playwrights and is regarded as the founder of Catalan children's theatre. 15 December 2025 will mark the 75th anniversary of his death, and in a bid to raise awareness of his work, the Folch i Torres Foundation, based in the Plegamans Castle, entered into a cooperation agreement with Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona) on 28 November. “Institutions like yours help us reach a wider audience than we could on our own,” explained Miquel Truyols Rocabruna, president of the Foundation. The agreement was signed by Truyols Rocabruna and Dr Josep M. Torné Santos, general manager at UIC Barcelona, in an event held on the University’s Barcelona Campus.

With the Faculty of Education Sciences at UIC Barcelona, and as outlined in the agreement, “the partnership will initially involve the joint development of teaching materials based on the Massagran comics, fables and other emblematic texts, with the aim of fostering values, linguistic communication skills and creativity in the classroom.”

Dr Asunción Verdera and Faculty lecturer Carla Vidal praised “the Foundation’s great wealth of documentary resources”. “We decided to extend the agreement to the entire family, with the aim of ensuring the continuity of this heritage, convinced that education is the most suitable channel for doing so,” they stated. Dr Carmina Folch Dàvila, Lluís Folch i Torres's great-granddaughter, delivered a lecture about her great-grandfather, considered “Catalonia’s first educational psychologist”, according to the UIC Barcelona lecturer.

In addition, under the agreement, materials from the Foundation will be incorporated into university courses to promote knowledge transfer, research activities will be carried out to analyse the impact of the family’s work and both institutions will encourage the development of intergenerational reading guides for shared reading between children and older adults linked to the University’s Experience Campus programme.
 

Folch i Torres family

According to the Foundation, “the siblings Manuel, Lluís, Josep M., Mercè, Ignasi and Joaquim represent the quintessential example of a family whose members shared a passion for literature and the arts.” The museum, housed within the Plegamans Castle (Palau-solità i Plegamans, Vallès Occidental), showcases the work and lives of the five siblings through a permanent exhibition in the Romanesque hall on the main floor. It includes examples of books that they published, magazines that they edited and a diverse array of personal mementos from their private lives.

Josep Maria Folch i Torres is the author of Les aventures extraordinàries d’en Massagran [The Extraordinary Adventures of Massagran], the writer's best known children’s book, in which the character Massagran appears for the first time. Also released in comic form, the Faculty of Education Sciences will develop teaching materials as part of a broader project to disseminate and highlight the Folch i Torres family's literary legacy.