A senior executive interested in contemporary history; an analyst passionate about opera, a prestigious architect who wants to immerse himself in geopolitics to understand global conflicts. These are diverse profiles and interests, with a common denominator: the eagerness to learn. And not to obtain a degree, for professional motivation or any other external pressure, but for the pure pleasure of learning, for the delight of knowing.
These profiles make up an atypical student body due to their age and cultural level, who regularly gather at the Cetres cultural club, a rara avis that this year reaches 50 years of existence. As a private center without profit motive or subsidies, it has since offered courses and seminars on multiple disciplines —ranging from politics to history, through psychology and music—, in addition to cultural trips led by renowned professors. During this half century, the club located in Sant Gervasi-Galvany has seen the most representative figures of the business world and Barcelona's civil society pass through its classrooms.
The unique profile of the students and the select professors of the cultural center generate an exclusive and petit comité agora, which is far from a master class format to become a forum for the exchange of knowledge and approaches. A meeting point that borders on the secret where not only culture and knowledge are transmitted, but new ideas are generated and the possibility of better understanding reality, from the most global, with the doctor in History Adrià Fortet, to the most internal, with the philosopher Begoña Román.
The entrepreneur Tyn Campos founded Cetres in 1974 as a permanent training center that combined timeless knowledge with current eventsFortet and Roman are two of the professors with whom the cultural association faces the course that opens this autumn. Roman, Doctor of Philosophy and president of the Ethics Committee of Social Services of Catalonia, will analyze the figure of Imanuel Kant and its implications in a seminar. For his part, the world history of the 20th century will be the focus of the course taught by Fortet, historian and disciple of Joan B. Culla, who was a professor at Cetres for decades until he passed away last year.
The program for this course will feature historian José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec, with a course on essential readings to address current events; experts Enric Prats and Joan Vives and their approach to classical music and opera; professor Joaquim Colominas and his analysis of the French political system; former minister and professor at Esade Francesc Xavier Mena and his review of major business dynasties worldwide, and artist and doctor in Fine Arts Carolina Camañes, among other proposals. The program will also include, as usual, author-led and value-added trips with expert professors in the history and culture of the place. In its five decades of activity, these trips have taken Cetres to European destinations and beyond, such as Asian enclaves on the Silk Road and unexpected places in sub-Saharan Africa.
This same format of courses, seminars, and trips as a channel to respond to the thirst for knowledge is what entrepreneur Tyn Campos sought in 1974. In a Barcelona so different from today's, Campos set out to deepen her knowledge in art and psychology, but could not find a way to satisfy her curiosity. It was then that she proposed to two culturally curious friends to found the association to create what she could not find in a Barcelona so different from today's and eager for a cultural, economic, and social awakening that was yet to come. Thus, Cetres emerged as a pioneering center in the cultural and social sphere at the end of the dictatorship, paving the way for what years later would be considered normality.
Despite the difficulty of the context and the role then largely attributed to women, Campos, along with the two initial partners, set out to design a permanent training proposal that combined timeless knowledge with current events. All under the conviction that "knowledge facilitates self-esteem" and generates changes that can transform lives and, consequently, society, as Campos advocated.
With this premise, Cetres was configured with the will that students would come to the center not to be entertained, but to "leave with something on"; and not only knowledge, but knowledge to understand reality and have the capacity to transform it. From these objectives, the association began to take shape and expand its range of proposals: the initial punctual meetings consolidated into conferences, seminars, courses, cultural trips and even international exhibitions in which Cetres has promoted Catalan artists in countries such as France, Italy and Belgium, with a role based not only on disseminating culture, but also on generating it. And it is that, as Campos defended, "culture is investing in oneself, which is why it is the most profitable business." Campos, recognized with the Dones de Medalla de Sarrià-Sant Gervasi award in 2008, led Cetres from its foundation until her death in 2021, with her curiosity intact.
Now under the leadership of Susanna López, the cultural club continues to disseminate and generate culture with the second generation at the helm of the center, which maintains and enhances that objective of "enjoying the pleasure of learning for the sake of learning", according to López. All of this from an atypical microcosm from which Cetres has emerged as a bastion of culture and knowledge in a discreet, almost secret way, presenting itself as a discovery with half a century of trajectory.