The event was chaired by the rector of the UB, together with the Minister of Economy and Knowledge of the Catalan Government, Andreu Mas-Colell, and the dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business, Elisenda Paluzie. The ceremony gathered colleagues and disciples of Fabián Estapé, as well as numerous representatives of the Catalan society and political sector, and included addresses by Jordi Goula, journalist for the newspaper La Vanguardia; Miquel Corominas, professor from the Department of City Planning at the UPC, who talked about Estapéʼs commitment to the urban analysis of Barcelona; Joan Mas, member number one of the Circle of Economy; Lluís Maria de Puig, president of the Ernest Lluch Foundation; professors Josep M. Gil-Vernet and Joan Hortalà, members of Estapéʼs Governing body during his tenure as rector, and Manuel Estapé, on behalf of the family.
The rector Dídac Ramírez stressed that «more than 37,000 students» attended Estapéʼs lectures, many of whom became prominent personalities from the political sphere, such as Ernest Lluch, Josep Piqué or Pasqual Maragall, and the academic world. In addition, the rector of the UB highlighted Fabián Estapéʼs important role in modernising and promoting economics at a Spanish university level. Vigorous, lively, irreverent and iconoclastic were some of the adjectives used during the ceremony to recall Fabián Estapé.
Lecturer Fabian Estapé was rector of the University of Barcelona twice (for the periods 1969-1971 and 1974-1976); he was also vice-rector and dean of the Faculty of Economics. Ernest Lluch, Pasqual Maragall, Josep Piqué, Narcís Serra, Anna Birulés, Antoni Serra Ramoneda, Jacint Ros i Hombravella, Joan Hortalà and Anton Costas were some of his students. In addition, Estapé was professor at the University of Zaragoza and lecturer at the Pompeu Fabra University.
He spread the Historical school of John Kenneth Galbraith and Joseph Alois Schumpeter, and wrote the prologue for Schumpeterʼs book Capitalisme, socialisme i democràcia (1966). Estapéʼs most important work has been collected in Ensayos sobre historia del pensamiento económico (1971) and in Ensayos sobre economía española (1972). He was the editor of Ildefons Cerdàʼs Teoría general de la urbanización.
He was also author, among other works, of Conversaciones con Fabián Estapé (1989), Introducción al pensamiento económico: una perspectiva española (1990), Lliçons dʼeconomia domèstica (1996) and the autobiography De tots colors (Gaziel Prize, 1999). In 1997 he was appointed vice-president of ENHER. He was awarded the Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George Cross) in 1990 and the Jaume I Prize in 1995.
