The UAB is sad to announce the death of Professor Juan Carlos Rubio
Professor Juan Carlos Rubio from the Department of Spanish Studies passed away on 19 July. The UAB sends its heartfelt condolences to his family and friends and to all the people who knew and appreciated him, and wishes to express its sadness for having lost a member of its community.
Professor Carme Riera, also from the Department of Spanish Studies, dedicated the following words to Professor Rubio:
Professor Juan Carlos Rubio Martínez has passed away.
The Department of Spanish Studies is in mourning for the death of Professor Juan Carlos Rubio Martínez, who passed away on 19 July after battling a long illness.
Juan Carlos Rubio Martínez was born in 1950 in San Andrés de Cameros, La Rioja, in a home which, like most other buildings in the town, disappeared after the creation of the Pajares dam. This event would mark his life.
Rubio always felt connected to his birthplace, and returned to it as often as he could. In fact, the articles he enjoyed writing the most always had to do with issues related to Cameros. The first one, Una estela funerària romana en San Andrés de Cameros, published in 1997 in the journal of classic studies Faventia, nr. 19, studied the stele found in the area of Cameros, which today is preserved in the Ethnographic Museum of San Andrés, where samples of the daily life of the part of the village covered by the waters of the reservoir are gathered, so as to preserve the memories of that period. The second, La tierra te sea leve, appeared in 2008 in issue 28 of Piedra de rayo, a popular culture magazine from La Rioja.
Juan Carlos Rubio had the support of his older sister, Mari Luz, a school teacher. After graduating from high school and passing the pre-university exam at the Sagasta Institute in Logroño, he went to live in Sabadell with his sister, who worked as a teacher. In Sabadell he met his future wife, Antònia Solvas, then a medical student and now a doctor.
Juan Carlos, attracted from a very young age by the humanities and language, enrolled in the 1970/71 academic year in the Faculty of Spanish Philology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
He was a good student, especially interested in grammar, as evidenced by his PhD thesis "Las subordinadas adverbiales en español (la argumentación lingüística)", defended in 1990 and later published as a book.
In 1991, he won the competitive examinations to become a full professor of Spanish Language and from then until 2015, when he retired, he taught at our university.
Many students remember with nostalgia his classes on syntax and history of grammar and his extraordinary cordiality.
His colleagues remember his kindness and friendliness, his willingness to help everyone.
In our Faculty he held several management positions:
Director of the Department of Spanish Studies (2008-2011). Academic Secretary and Head of Economics (2001-2005). Degree Coordinator (1995-2008). Coordinator of the University Entrance Exams (PAU) of Spanish Language and Literature of the Government of Catalonia-Interuniversity Council of Catalonia (DURSI) (1998-2006).
His research, first focused on Spanish grammar and linguistics, later shifted to Amerindian languages and their relationship with Spanish. In 2003 he introduced a course on Amerindian Languages in the Graduate Degree in International and Intercultural Studies at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting.
He was a visiting professor and did research stays both at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1993 and at the Department of Indigenous Language Studies (DELI) in 2000. In 2006 he received an invitation from the Directorate of Linguistics of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico City.
Those of us who had the good fortune and joy of coinciding with him at the Faculty can feel lucky: Professor Rubio was a great person and a magnificent colleague.