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I was scheduled to give a talk on the last day of the conference. My mind went blank after the talk. I walked out of the venue and sat on a chair in the small square for a while, feeding a pigeon with the nuts given for lunch. I probably won't come to this small school for the rest of the time. When I was in a daze, I thought I should record something.

I really like smaller universities, such as HKUST where I used to be, and UPF where I am now. This campus is very small, with only two buildings, but during the meetings, I often felt that it was very big, with its doors wide open to absorb the whole of Barcelona: next door is Parc de la Ciutadella; the other side of the park is close to the old town, and not far away is the Arc de Triomf and the square Eixample; and the beach is only a dozen minutes' walk southeast. I imagine that studying here should be a great experience.

The full name of UPF is Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Like most people, I didn't know what Pompeu Fabra meant at first. Maybe it was a place name or a person's name. The day before yesterday, I saw the relevant introduction in the History Museum and learned that Pompeu Fabra was a linguist. His works and the dictionary he presided over laid the grammar and vocabulary standards of modern Catalan. In 1990, the Catalan Autonomous Government established this university in his memory. This school is very young.

Maybe it has something to do with the origin of the name. All the signs in this school are in Catalan. The absence of Spanish may be a stubborn adherence to Catalan traditions, but for some reason there is no English either. I can't tell the difference between Spanish and Catalan. During the coffee break on the first day of the meeting, I looked at a sign about the building for a long time and still didn't understand it. There happened to be an old Spanish man eating bread standing next to me, and he was also looking at the sign. I thought maybe I could ask him.

As an aside, the Spanish elderly people I met on the road these days all looked very cute. They were like the characters in Marquez’s novels, and seemed able to tell endless stories at any time.

"Do you understand Spanish?" I asked, or so I asked.

The old man told me that the writing on it was not in Spanish, but in Catalan. Then he talked about the origin of this building. Actually, I didn't quite understand his Spanish-flavored English, but I heard a few words clearly, memorial, Franco, Civil War... I think maybe when I talk to Europeans about Chiang Kai-shek, they have similar confusion.

"They should add an English introduction." The old man said this to me as he left.

He was not tall, with gray hair and a little baldness. After that, I often saw him coming to the meeting, often sitting in the first row, and when he entered the door, people respectfully made way for him. I didn't know his name, maybe he was a respected old teacher in UPF.

My idea is not wrong. This morning I was listening to an award presentation and I found that the chair on the stage was this old man. It turns out that he is a Pompeu Fabra-like figure in economics, and he is Andreu Mas-Colell.

(Completed on September 1, 2023)

Note: Andreu Mas-Colell, an economist, co-authored Microeconomic Theory with Michael Whinston and Jerry R. Green, a classic textbook on advanced microeconomic theory. In the Catalan government from 2010 to 2016, chaired by Artur Mas, Andreu Mas-Colell was appointed a member of the Economic and Knowledge Committee, responsible for government budget, economic policy and research policy. In June 2021, the Spanish Court of Auditors ruled that Mas-Colell and several former colleagues in the Catalan government were responsible for the mismanagement of 4.8 million euros in support of Catalan independence. Paul Romer, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, called the procedure "not justice but politics by other means". One member of the council voted against the decision.