Portal de Murcia
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The magazine Centum of the UMU dedicates a monographic number to the figures of Laureano Sánchez Gallego and Manuel Pérez Xambó, two prestigious professors of the 30s, who occupied the rectorate of the University of Murcia in times as convulsive as those of the Civil War , and in which a considerable part of the facilities of the institution were dedicated to blood hospital of the International Brigades.
Between July of 1936 and March of 1939 they directed the destinies of the University of Murcia, and in spite of being closed to the usual academic courses because of the contest, they managed to offer to the Murcian diverse activities of university extension, to create the Baccalaureate Abbreviated Workers and sponsor the Culture Militias, with which it was intended to fight against the high rate of illiteracy by training the combatants.
The Salamanca Laureano Sánchez Gallego, son of a family of farm laborers and farmer like them, studied in a seminar promoted by the priest of his people, who knew how to see the enormous qualities that he treasured.
After taking the number one in the opposition to school teacher at the beginning of the twentieth century, he attended the bachelor with 32 years, having since then a meteoric career: law degree, Doctor and Professor of Law in seven years (1917), and later a "cursus honorum" at the University of Murcia, where he held the positions of Dean, Secretary of the Faculty of Law and Vice Chancellor between 1917 and 1932 and Rector between October 1936 and November 1937, replacing the then Rector José Loustau .
After the arrival of Franco's troops he went into exile in Mexico, where even today his grave in Tijuana is filled with flowers on Teacher's Day.
The second of the republican rectors was Manuel Pérez Xambó, a member of the high society of Murcia, an expert fencer and skilled speaker.
He was Professor of Law, and between November 1937 and March 1939 he was Rector Commissioner of the University of Murcia.
He was subjected to summary trial in 1939 and was only saved from the death penalty for the fact of hiding for months in his home who was later Rector of the University of Murcia, and later archbishop of Astorga, Jesus Mérida Pérez.
In the trial he was accused of having been rector of the University during the war.
His defense: that he had been because he was the only professor left in it.
The promoter of this issue has been the UMU Professor of Contemporary History Pedro María Egea Bruno, who has researched in the historical documentation to bring to light this almost unknown history, which means filling a gap in the history of the Rectors of the Murcia University.
The number is completed by a prologue by the Rector José Luján, another on Loustau during the Republican period, an article on the university hospital of the International Brigades, a paper on the Andalusian women in Murcia, and another on the beginning of the 1939-1940 academic year.
The magazine will be presented next April 1 in the Mariano Baquero room of the Faculty of Letters (Campus de la Merced), at 7 pm, in an act that will be chaired by Rector José Luján and in which Pascual Vera will participate and Ana Martín Luque, director and coordinator of the magazine, respectively, as well as the professors of the UMU Pedro Mª Egea Bruno and Alberto Requena, and the professor Magdalena Carrillo Caballero, authors of the articles that make up the publication.
Source: Universidad de Murcia
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