Joan Doménec Bardina Castarà () (1877-1950) was a Spanish-Chilean theorist of education, acknowledged for his innovative approach to pedagogy and for his contribution to renewal of the Catalan schooling system. In Chile he is known also as a scholar in law; in Spain, and especially in Catalonia, he is recognized as a member of the Catalanist movement. Active in Carlism during his youth, he is considered a typical case of a transitional political identity, moving from Carlism to peripheral nationalism. Increasingly concerned with social issues, by the end of his life he sympathized with Francoism and Nazism; he also focused more on his extended family and became increasingly religious. His manuals, published anonymously and related mostly to health, hygiene and cuisine, were fairly popular in Spain in the 1920s and 1930s.

Family and youth

Joan Bardina Castarà descended from a Catalan family. His paternal grandparents, Josep Bardina and Maria Savarich, lived in a Pyrenean "village of Santa Creu" Llogaret de Santa Creu located in the region of Urgel SW of Andorra, Alto Urgel county, and had 12 children.Anna Forés i Miravelles, Joan Bardina Castarà: Educator Catalán y sus proyecciones pedagógicas en Chile [PhD thesis Universidad de Barcelona], Barcelona 1996, p. 52, Artur Martorell, Enric Cassasses, Josep Parunella, Joan Bardina I Castará. Dades Biográfiques recollides per alumnes de l’Escola de Mestres, Barcelona 1959 [reproduced as Annex 18 in Forés i Miravelles 1996], p. 18 The youngest of them, Joan Bardina Savarich (died 1891),Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 13, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, p. 9 left the family home early and in search of work settled in Sant Boi de Llobregat, a town at the outskirts of Barcelona. It is there where he commenced working, first as a locksmith and then as a blacksmith. He married a local girl, Dolores Castarà Sigró. She also came from a humble, though somewhat better positioned family; her parents, Josep Castarà Marigó and María Ciuró (originally Sigró) Puig, were handicraftsmen specializing in lace-making; especially the latter was recognized in the town.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 52 The newly married couple had one child, a daughter, before Dolores died. A widower, Joan married her younger sister, Josepa Castarà Ciuró. They had 4 children, Josepa, Joan, Baldiri and Magdalena.Forés i Miravelles 1996, pp. 52-53

Educated in a kindergarten, at the age of 5 Joan was able to read and write.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 53, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, pp. 5-6 In 1884 he moved to elementary school, excelling as an extraordinary student. It was the headmaster who suggested that the boy pursues a more ambitious career. In line with the advice,and somewhat against the standard practice, since the oldest son was supposed to succeed his father in 1887 Joan entered the Barcelona seminary.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 54 He kept collecting awardsForés i Miravelles 1996, p. 55 until the mid-1890s,Forés i Miravelles 1996, pp. 56-58 as a teenager developing interest in photography, folk customs and tourism.Forés i Miravelles 1996, pp. 55-56 However, path towards an ecclesiastical careerin 1897 he was close to signing up to ecclesiastical service in Mexico, with other seminarians, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, p. 156 was abruptly abandoned. Trying his hand in local journals, Bardina published a pamphlet deemed disrespectful towards the cardinal Sancha y Hervás;titled El Cardenal Sancha y otros excesos = media vuelta a la derecha es igual que media vuelta a la izquierda, pero todo lo contrario. Though Bardina signed the piece, published in Lo Mestre Titas, as “Valcarlos”, it was well known who the author was, Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 13, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, p. 155 he considered a heavy reprimand received unfair. When his work on Kant, winning the first prize at a Valencia Seminary contest, was declared arrogant in his home seminary, in 1898exact date is not clear, some sources mention 1896. However, later on Bardina explicitly referred to “nine years spent in the seminar”, Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 13 Bardina left the school.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 59 He obtained bachillerato in 1899 in Instituto de Girona and graduated in philosophy and letters from University of Barcelona in 1900.thesis titled Orígenes de la Tradición y del Régimen Liberal, Forés i Miravelles 1996, pp. 14, 68. Some authors claim he graduated in 1904, see Jordi Canal, El carlismo catalanista a la fi del segle XIX: Joan Bardina i Lo Mestre Titas (1897-1900), [in:] Recerques 34 (1996), p. 50; this seems to be a mistake. Bardina’s biographer claims that 1904 was the year when his thesis was published Himself exempted from military service,as the oldest son of a widow, Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 68 in 1901 he volunteered to spare conscription of his sickly brother Baldiri.the sacrifice was useless; Baldiri died shortly afterwards, Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 68-69. The military service was not very challenging anyway; during few months Bardina had to show up at a Barcelona military office to perform bureaucratic duties, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, pp. 159-160 At that time he was already trying to make a living by contributing to Barcelona periodicals and publishing own booklets.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 13; since the early 1890s he was used to earning money by winning various literary contests, the first one in 1889, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, p. 18, p. 152. With premature death of his father, his widowed mother and his sisters moved to Barcelona, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, pp. 18, 155

In 1906 Bardina married Josepa Soronellas Brosé (1880-1910),Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 15 a feminist activist;she was the nominal author of Historia Sagrada Educativa, fathered probably (at least partially) by Prat de la Riba, issued 1906, El Presupuesto Extraordinario de Cultura y la Institución de Cultura Popular (1908) del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, [in:] filosofia.org service, available here; Bardina wrote a prologue to the book her father was involved in housekeeping, printing and distribution of a periodical Bardina worked with.Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, pp. 18, 164 In 1907 their only child, Remedios (Reimei) Bardina Soronellas, was born.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 15, Artur Martorell, Joan Bardina i l’Escola de Mestres, Barcelona 1961, p. 16 The girl initially lived with her parents and then with her widowed father in Barcelona, after his departure to stay with her grandmother. Remedios was the first female law graduate of the University of Barcelona and among the first three female PhD graduates from the University of Madrid, to gain another PhD from the University of Berlin. She married Yen Huai Liu, a fellow PhD student from China.Yen Huai Liu was a famous Chinese explorer of the Great Gobi Desert, a college Professor, author of many college textbooks, and a decorated war hero. He served in the Nationalist Kuomintang Air force fighting the Japanese invasion In the 1930s the couple settled in China and later, together with seven children, in Taiwan.the children were: John, b. 1933 (pilot in USA; three daughters), Henry- 1936-2009 (PhD Professor & inventor in USA- three sons), George - 1939-2012 (USA- one daughter one son), Mary- 1942 (PhD in USA; one daughter and one son), Annie- 1946 (IT in Australia; two sons), Helen- 1948 (IT in USA; one daughter), Vincent-1952 (inventor & engineer in USA; two sons). Yen Huai Liu died in Taiwan in 1982 and Remedios passed away in San Diego, USA in 1999. Remedios' life in China was captured in her self-published memoir: "My Fifteen Years In China" by R. Bardina Liu, 1996. In 1921, already in Chile, Bardina remarried with a local girl Raquel Venegas (born 1902);death date unknown (after 1950) none of the sources consulted offers any information on her family.she was personal assistant to Bardina, Anna Forés Miravelles 1996, p. 223 The couple had 4 children, Joan, Raquel, Rebeca and Marta, born between 1922 and 1927.Forés i Miravelles 1996, p. 18, Martorell 1961, pp. 75-76 Joan Bardina Venegas married Yolanda Carvajal from Peumo, Chile, in 1946 and had four children: Yoli (1948), Juan (1949), Jorge (1950) and Veronica Remei (1954). All of Joan Bardina Castara's grandchildren married and had a total of 25 great-grandchildren;d; Bardina lived just to see some of his Chilean grandchildren being born. in Chile and Argentina, Martorell, Cassasses, Parunella 1959, p. 194

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