Two studies on Pau Casals’ international projection and cultural diplomacy win the 2026 research grants from the UNESCO Chair Pau Casals

The research projects “Pau Casals’s Cultural Diplomacy through El Pessebre: Puerto Rico as a Node (Hub) in an International Circuit of Peace and the ‘Politics of Reception’ (1957–1973)” and “The Reception of Pau Casals in Buenos Aires: Event, Networks of Sociability, and Cultural Memory (1937–c.1960)” are the winners of the fourth call for the UNESCO Pau Casals Chair Research Grants 2026.

This year, the call received 58 proposals from 37 different countries.

The Pau Casals UNESCO Chair –the result of an agreement between the Pau Casals Foundation and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)– aims to promote research, knowledge production, dissemination, and contemporary debate on the relationship between music and the defense of the values of peace, human rights, and democracy.

The selection committee made a very positive assessment of all the proposals, highlighting above all their international scope –candidates came from four different continents (sixteen from Africa, eleven from the Americas, eight from Asia, and two from Europe)–, the diversity of profiles, as well as the musical and humanistic dimensions of all the projects submitted. Finally, it was decided to award the grants to the project “Pau Casals’s Cultural Diplomacy through El Pessebre: Puerto Rico as a Node (Hub) in an International Circuit of Peace and the ‘Politics of Reception’ (1957–1973)” presented by Haruko Hosada Kawase, and the project “The Reception of Pau Casals in Buenos Aires: Event, Networks of Sociability, and Cultural Memory (1937–c.1960)” presented by Guillermo Alejandro Dellmans.

The project by Haruko Hosada Kawase, professor at the University of Tokyo, “Pau Casals’s Cultural Diplomacy through El Pessebre: Puerto Rico as a Node (Hub) in an International Circuit of Peace and the ‘Politics of Reception’ (1957–1973)”, aims to reconstruct, through primary sources, the circulation and framing of the oratorio El Pessebre –a poem by Joan Alavedra set to music by Pau Casals between 1943 and 1946 and orchestrated by his brother Enric– and to explain the role of Puerto Rico as a “border space,” comparing Mexico (government and Republic in exile), Spain (Francoism), and the United States.

The second winning project is the one presented by Guillermo Alejandro Dellmans, professor at the University of Buenos Aires, “The Reception of Pau Casals in Buenos Aires: Event, Networks of Sociability, and Cultural Memory (1937–c.1960)”. The research proposes to analyze the reception of Pau Casals in Buenos Aires from his 1937 visit to its possible later reinterpretations, within the context of the Spanish Civil War and the impact of the Republican exile in Argentina. The project seeks to contribute to an understanding of musical reception as a dynamic historical process shaped by ideological disputes and practices of cultural memory.

The UNESCO Pau Casals Chair, in collaboration with the Sociedad de Gestión de Artistas Intérpretes o Ejecutantes de España (AIE), provides financial support for each of the funded projects, as well as guidance from a committee of experts and access to the Pau Casals documentary collection housed at the National Archive of Catalonia, among other benefits.

The 2024 research grant projects were those presented by Magda Polo Pujadas, “The Musical Aesthetics of Pau Casals: Tradition and Modernity” and by John Gledhill “The Roles and Functions of Music in United Nations Peacebuilding”. Both are currently in the editing process, and their results will be available in the Chair Papers collection.

In 2025, the selected projects were “Pau Casals and the Nobel Peace Prize: A Candidacy during the Cold War” presented by Joan Esculies Serrat, and “Music against Conscription: Cultural Resistance and Anti-Militarist Protest in Spain (1984–2002)”, jointly presented by Andrés López Estapé and Violeta Caballero Caballero, which are currently underway.