Tortosa will host the institutional address for Catalonia's National Day, La Diada, on 11 September at 11:00 at the city council’s plenary hall. The lecture will be delivered by local-born filologist Àngels Massip Bonet, a senior lecturer in Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona.
Massip Bonet, born in Tortosa in 1957, will speak on the theme: Why the date of military defeat against Franco-Castilian troops became our national holiday: Consequences of the Castilian annexation of the Catalan-Aragonese Crown. Tortosa passes into Bourbon hands in 1708. The event will conclude with the performance of Catalonia’s national anthem, Els Segadors.
Expertise in Catalan Language and History
Massip Bonet holds a PhD in Catalan Philology from the University of Barcelona, where she also earned her degree in Hispanic Philology. She has led research projects including Diatopia and Linguistic Change: Scripta and Dialectal Variation (FFI2016-80482-P), funded by Spain’s Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. Her academic work spans dialectology, historical linguistics, and sociolinguistics.
She has published extensively on Tortosa’s linguistic heritage, including editions of medieval Catalan texts such as the Llibre de Costums de Tortosa, the first legal code written originally in Catalan, dating to the 13th century. This document helped shape governance in the New Catalonia region and influenced legal systems in Mallorca and Valencia.
Local Roots, National Significance
Massip Bonet’s scholarship often focuses on her native Tortosa. Her doctoral thesis, El Lèxic tortosí: història i present, examined the evolution of local vocabulary. She has also contributed to the University of Barcelona’s research group on linguistic variation and is affiliated with the Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS).
"The Consuetudines Dertosae laid early foundations for parliamentary democracy in Europe, establishing the popular estate in public life,"
as noted in her publication on the Costums de Tortosa, hosted by the University of Barcelona’s Department of Catalan Philology.
Primary sources: ub.edu, filcat.ub.edu, diposit.ub.edu, GREC - Aplicació de Gestió de la Recerca - UB, vocabularis.crai.ub.edu, crai.ub.edu. Reported by ca.wikipedia.org, publicacions.iec.cat, diaridetarragona.com, tortosa.cat, es.wikipedia.org, ACN, imaginaradio.cat.
