On 15 September 1994, the appointment of Joan Olòriz as the first student ombudsman and chair of the Student Defence Commission was published in the official gazette (BOU) of the UdG. A year later, the statutes approved on 11 October 1995 would consolidate the figure, functions and responsibilities of the University Ombudsperson, extending them to the entire university community by means of a resolution by the Rector of 8 November.
The Olòriz office found the need to “develop a new figure in an institutional framework under construction”. The legal context for universities at the time did not regulate the figure outside of the articles of association themselves, and in an almost spontaneous way the different Catalan and Spanish universities gradually implemented the figure.
The Pep Vila term was from September 1999 to 2004, a time when the role of university ombudsman offices was reaffirmed. The figure was already present in practically all universities, and state and regional laws, albeit subtly, began to recognise it.
February 2004 brought the start of the Joan Miró term, which continued until 2014, the longest term in these thirty years. During these years, Joan Miró probably experienced very ‘busy’ moments in university life; these are years of changes and difficulties, of significant volumes of complaints to the ombudsman, but also of great advances in the consolidation of the ombudsman’s offices.
From July 2014 to February 2022, he “acted as ombudsman”, as Joan Manuel del Pozo said: “Being an ombudsman, a positionauctoritas, not potestas” that “neither orders nor sentences”, helps to seek justice. The Del Pozo term coincided with a time when the University is equipped with mechanisms, resources and services that deal with the structure and ordinary functioning of issues, difficulties and conflicts that previously came directly to the Ombudsman’s Office.
Since February 2022, the UdG has given me the honour, trust, and responsibility of “acting as the UdG Ombudsman”.
The work of ombudsman offices has to do with the most essential core of humanistic and ethical values. This is probably why the formal definition of their role has not changed much over the years.Fortunately, the status and legal recognition have changed, with the incorporation of its basic regulation in the text of the organic law of the university system and, consequently, in the UdG articles of association approved in 2025. There is a slogan that the Ombudsman offices in the Catalan sphere and beyond have adopted as our own in these year: “More justice than law, more auctoritas than power, more humanism than bureaucracy”. It is from Dr Artur Juncosa, who was the ombudsman with the UB in the 90s. This slogan summarises, from my point of view, and I understand that it is widely shared among ombudsmen, the fundamental pillars of their work, the fundamental pillars of our work and commitment to serving the university community: humanism and institutionality.
Montserrat Palma Muñoz University Ombudsman