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Abstract
Pere Verges was one of the most prominent pedagogues in the New School's movement to update education. In Catalonia, together with figures such as Rosa Sensat, Artur Martorell and Alexandre Galí, he contributed to a vision of education centred on sensitivity, the child and their autonomy. The subject of this study is Pere Verges. It is intended to provide a new vision alongside the existing studies focused on the competitive-sports field. Using a methodology based on the analysis of primary sources, along with a complete set of references that have examined the subject, we conclude that Verges showed a distinctive and unique character in his pedagogy. Contrary to the postulates of non-competition in the New School movements, yet while maintaining this idea of renewal, he included educational competition as a singular element.
Keywords: competition, sport, education, Pere Verges, pedagogy
Introduction
The figure of the Catalan educator Pere Verges Farrés (Barcelona, 1896-1970) should be placed within the context of the entire educational renewal movement and the New School (González-Agapito, 1978a; Mones, 2011). Thus, the set of European ideas with hygienist leanings, in favour of the education of the child, appeared in Spain through the pedagogues of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Education Institution), along with other personalities primarily representing the public authority and the bourgeoisie. In Catalonia, the institutions themselves sought to palliate the high level of child mortality, increase children's health and deal with childhood illiteracy. The pedagogical movement with these goals of hygiene and universal education can be fit within this context, which also sought to achieve a state of peace between the working class and the bourgeoisie. L'Escola del Bosc (1914) and the Escola del Mar (1922) appeared within this current, and this is also when Pere Vergés' educational ideal appeared (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 1922, 1932; Martorell, 1965; Monés & Bosom, 1992).
The director of the Antigua Escola del Mar (19221938), which was destroyed by a bombardment in the Civil War, at all times advocated play and sport as key elements in his philosophy and his vocation as a teacher and pedagogue (Saladrigas, 1973; Vergés, 1935a). For this reason, in both the school camps he directed in Calafell (Brasó, 2017b) and the new sites where the school moved - in La...