The Arts and Humanities have been studied in Tarragona ever since the 16th century, when Cardinal Gaspar Cervantes de Gaeta founded a university that offered courses in Grammar, the Arts and Theology. Following the War of the Spanish Succession, the School of Literature, which was a dependency of the new University of Cervera, continued to offer courses until the mid-19th century. Later, from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s, the Ecclesiastical University of Tarragona offered higher education qualifications in Philosophy, Theology and Canon Law.
This long tradition was resumed in 1971-72, when the University of Barcelona began offering courses here. The process finally culminated in 1983 when the Spanish government decreed the creation of the Faculties of Arts and Chemical Sciences, the initial nucleus of what we now know as the Rovira i Virgili University (URV). The URV was subsequently established by the Catalan government (Generalitat de Catalunya) in December 1992.
The Faculty of Arts is a dynamic centre that in the academic year 2023-24 offers 9 Bachelor’s degrees, 12 official Master's degrees and 1 Erasmus Mundus Master's degree.
The dynamism of the Faculty of Arts and its vocation and desire to be actively involved in the society that surrounds it has inspired the Faculty as a whole, its various Departments and its students to organize a wide range of activities (conferences, seminars, symposiums, extramural activities) that ensure the promotion and dissemination of culture throughout the southern regions of Catalonia. Similarly, we are in close and constant collaboration with the institutions and organizations that are active in our area. Moreover, our Faculty is open to the world, as is evident through our Erasmus agreements, our agreements with American universities, and our agreements with universities of the People's Republic of China.
The commitment of the Faculty of Arts to promoting innovation and improvements in the quality of teaching is reflected by the numerous awards granted to several of our groups and teachers that reward and provide further incentive for their efforts and achievements. These include:
International Master's Programme (IMP) distinction 2014 awarded by the AGAUR for official and university specific master's programmes taught in Catalonia. Awarded to the Erasmus Mundus Master's Programme in Quaternary Archaeology and Human Evolution in recognition of the international qualities and qualifications of the Teaching and Research Staff. The awards helps to consolidate and promote both local and foreign prospective students and the international university community in general.
- 2022 Prize for the Social Impact of Research awarded by the URV Social Council for the study "Care matters: impact of gender on carers of the elderly and dependents in times of Covid-19", presented by Dolors Comas d'Argemir, Claudia María Anleu Hernández, Xabier Ballesteros Olozabal, Yolanda Bodoque Puerta, Carlos Alonso Chirinos Medina, Herena Coma Almenar, María Offenhenden, Marta Pi Martín, Carmina Puig Cruells, Mireia Roca Escoda, Montserrat Soronellas Masdeu, Ramona Torrens Bonet i Laia Ventura Garcia Social Anthropology Research Group.
- 2022 URV Social Council Prize for Teaching Quality awarded to the project " Overcoming the pandemic: Technology at the service of interaction in the virtualisation of a workshop for doctoral students", presented in the collective category with M. Dolores Jiménez López as a representative of the Faculty of Arts.
- 2021 Prize for the Social Impact of Research awarded by the URV Social Council for the project "EPINED-II. SoCaTel, a co-creation platform for better access to Long Term Care Services", presented by Blanca Deusdad Ayala, Isabella Riccó and Marija Djurdjevic Deak of the Social Anthropology Research Group.
- 2019 Prize for the Social Impact of Research awarded by the URV Social Council for the project "El Llindar: Promoting protection of the right to Housing - Homelessness prevention in the context of evictions", presented by, among other researchers, Juan Luís Gonzalo Iglesia of the Asterisc Communication Research Group.
- 2018 URV Social Council Prize for Teaching Quality awarded to the project "Community gardens at the URV: Environmental education for social innovation", in the collective category with the following representatives from the Faculty of Arts: Antonio Pérez-Portabella, Maoz Eliakim and Rosa Tamarit Sumalla.
- 2017 Prize for the Social Impact of Research awarded by the URV Social Council for the project "The Plio-Pleistocene archaeological site of the Camp dels Ninots and the pre-coastal depression: palaeoclimatic evolution and faunal and human dispersions", presented by the researcher Gerard Campeny Vall-Llosera of the AUTOQUAT - Human Autoecology of the Quaternary Research Group.
- 2014 URV Social Council Prize for Teaching Quality awarded to the project "SMiLE: Students of Mobility & Learning English", presented by Professor Liz Russell Brown of the Faculty of Arts.
- 2014 International Master's Programme (IMP) distinction, awarded by the AGAUR to the Erasmus Mundus Master's Degree in Quaternary Archaeology and Human Evolution, for official master's degree programmes taught in Catalonia. It recognises the programme's international dimension and teaching staff quality, and facilitates the consolidation and promotion of prospective students, both local and foreign, and of the international university community in general.
- 2013 URV Social Council Award for the project "The use of Whatsapp to increase motivation in reading texts in English", by the group consisting of Mar Gutiérrez-Colón Plana (coordinator), Ana Gimeno (UPV), Joseph Hopkins (UOC), Christine Appel (UOC), Isabel Gibert (URV), and Iodia Triana (URV).
- 2012 URV Social Council Award for Teaching Quality for the project "Digital letters: Creating transnational relations and intercultural competencies", presented by professors Iolanda Tortajada, Josetxo Cerdán and Juan Luís Gonzalo.
- 2011 Jaume Vicens Vives Award granted by the autonomous government of Catalonia (Generalitat de Catalunya) for the training program for Chinese students at the URV, coordinated by Sara Pujol, Maria Herrera and Esther Forgas.
- 2011 URV Social Council Award for the training program for Chinese students at the URV, coordinated by Sara Pujol, Maria Herrera and Esther Forgas.
- 2011 URV Social Council Award for teaching for a project presented by Antoni Pérez-Portabella entitled "Design and methodological experimentation and service of the learning activities of journalism students at the URV".
In relation to the accreditations carried out in the different Degrees of the Faculty of Arts, this section within this website shows in detail all the accreditation processes by AQU Catalunya (Catalan University Quality Agency), as well as their corresponding visits.
Furthermore, according to the 2023 edition of U-Ranking, the bachelor's degrees offered by the centre are leading qualifications in their field. U-Ranking scores courses on the basis of a series of indicators, and the scores obtained indicate the best universities for each type of course. In the Arts and Humanities, the URV is the top university in terms of its bachelor's degrees in English, Catalan Language and Literature and Hispanic Language and Literature. The others bachelor's degrees are in the first five positions.
From the Faculty, we insist on contributing to improve education, boosting the culture of our surroundings and shaping a more equal, plural and tolerant society.