María Eugenia Alegret i Burgués receives the Puig Salellas Award 2023
María Eugenia Alegret i Burgués has received this year’s Puig Salellas Award. This is the highest award granted annually by the Notarial Association of Catalonia to a person or institution that, in Catalonia, has demonstrated a remarkable career in the study, research, creation, teaching or application of law.
Puig Salellas Award
The ceremony, this year co-organized with the Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Catalonia, which was attended by numerous authorities from the legal field, was held at the headquarters of the Notarial Association of Catalonia, and was chaired by the Minister of Justice of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Gemma Ubasart, accompanied by the dean of the Notarial Association of Catalonia, José Alberto Marín, and by the president of the Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Catalonia, Francesc Tusquets, who was also in charge of presenting the award.
María Eugenia Alegret i Burgués
María Eugenia Alegret i Burgués graduated in Law from the University of Barcelona in 1978. She began her judicial career by competitive examination in 1980, serving as a judge in Lorca, Fraga and Sant Feliu de Llobregat. Subsequently, she was promoted to the rank of magistrate and practiced in Baracaldo and Terrassa.
In 1986 she began working at the Barcelona Court of First Instance No. 8 and, from 1991, at the Barcelona Provincial Court, serving first in Section 11 as a magistrate and then as president of Section 16. From 2000 to 2004 she was president of Section 14. The magistrate held the position of president of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia from 2004 to 2010 and, since 2011, she has been a magistrate of the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the same body.
Board of Directors of the Association
The Board of Directors of the Association has decided to grant the Award to the laureate “in recognition of her exemplary and brilliant legal career and her contribution to the jurisprudential and doctrinal updating of civil law in Catalonia”. They have also highlighted that she is a referential figure, since “she entered the judicial career at an early age and was the first woman to reach the Presidency of a High Court of Justice in Spain, that of Catalonia (2004-2010). From that body, currently as a member and president of its Civil Chamber, she undertook an important task of revision and modernization of our law being remarkable numerous judgments of which she has been rapporteur constituting, undoubtedly, the greatest judicial specialist in this area. Her participation in the Observatory of Private Civil Law was essential for the preparation of the Inheritance Code of Catalonia, immediate predecessor of Book IV of the Civil Code. In 2010 she received the “Justícia de Catalunya” Award, granted by the Generalitat de Catalunya. Her prestige led her to be elected as a full member of the Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Catalonia, of which she is currently Vice-President.
In short, “for being an excellent scholar of our law and a jurist with professional, human and social values that make her one of the most important references among the civil lawyers of our excellent legal community”.
