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HIS LIFE

His early studies

For the Valls family, the religious education of their children was a primary concern. Thus, Jesuits, Marists, and Brothers of La Salle were chosen to be responsible for the primary education of their six children. It should be noted that Luis Valls was always a good student, despite the various changes of school he had to undergo due to the historical period of his childhood. In his early years, when he lived with his parents and siblings in Barcelona, he attended an educational institution run by the Jesuits called the Instituto Comercial de la Inmaculada, an initiative supported by a group of Catholic families.

Studies in Italy

When the Civil War broke out, Luis Valls’ father fought to get his family out of Spain, and he succeeded on August 9, 1936, by means of a safe-conduct pass that allowed them to board an old Italian troop transport bound for Genoa. There, Luis Valls continued attending school and took classes in Italian. He continued classes in Rome, where they had to move) (his Italian report cards are in the archive).

In April 1937, his father was appointed archivist and librarian in Córdoba, and the whole family moved there with him. In the Andalusian city, the Ortiz de León and Primo de Rivera family hosted them in the lower part of their mansion. The Valls Taberner Arnó couple enrolled the siblings in the Colegio Cultura Española de los La Salle Brothers, a Catholic congregation of lay teachers—also known as the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools or Brothers of the Christian Schools—which was founded by Jean-Baptiste de La Salle in Reims, France, in 1680. They stayed there for two years.

Return Home

In January 1939, the Valls family began gradually moving back home. After a brief period in Logroño, where the children continued studying at the Colegio San José de los Maristas, they initiated the plan to return home. Luis Valls’s father learned that he could get his job back as the director of the Archive of the Crown of Aragon in Barcelona, so the Valls Taberner family was prepared to return to their city. This allowed the children to resume attending the Jesuit school on Caspe Street in Barcelona, where Luis finished high school with excellent grades. With this good academic record, he entered the Faculty of Law at the University of Barcelona to pursue his university studies.

Data extracted from:

Semblanza de Luis Valls written by Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora for publication by the FUNDER Foundation in an anthology of 20th-century Spanish bankers (the book was in fact never published). Book History of Banco Popular. The Struggle for Independence (Gabriel Tortella, José María Ortiz-Villajos, José Luis, García Ruiz. Marcial Pons, 2011).

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