MONGUIÓ, Luis 1908–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born June 25, 1908, in Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain; died of pneumonia July 10, 2005, in Clifton Park, NY. Educator and author. Monguió was a professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley and a scholar of Spanish-and Portuguese-language literature. After studying literature, philosophy, and languages in Barcelona, he completed a law degree at the University of Madrid in 1928. He then found a government job in the Spanish Diplomatic and Consular Service, and was awarded the Order of Civilian Merit and the Knight's Cross in 1931 for his contributions. When the Spanish Civil War began, Monguió fought as a private on the side of the Republicans in 1938. He immigrated to the United States the next year, working as a teaching assistant at Mills College in Oakland, California, until America entered World War II. Drafted into the Intelligence Service, Monguió was a spy in Africa and rose to the rank of sergeant major in the U.S. Army, seeing action at the Battle of the Bulge and participating in the liberation of concentration camp prisoners. Returning to the United States, he rejoined the Mills College faculty as professor of Romance languages. Monguió left Mills for Berkeley in 1957 as a Spanish professor and also chaired the department in the 1960s. Taking mandatory retirement in 1975, he continued to teach as a visiting professor at such institutions as the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Arizona, and Bennington College for many more years. He was the author and editor of several scholarly books, including Cesar Vallejo: Vida y obra (1952; second edition, 1960), Estudios sobre literatura hispanoamericana y espanola (1958), and Poesias de don Felipe Pardo y Aliaga (1973).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 2005, p. B3.

ONLINE

UC Berkeley News Center Web site, http://www.berkeley.edu/news/ (July 22, 2005).