"Félix Sardá i Salvany: influencia integrista en tiempos del sexenio y la restauración” was the title of the thesis defended by Minister Santi Vila. He presented his thesis before a jury consisting of full professors Joaquim Albareda (Pompeu Fabra University), Conxita Mir (University of Lleida) and Anna Maria Garcia (University of Girona). His thesis project was dedicated to one of the leading figures in Catalan and Spanish ultra-conservative Catholicism at the end of the nineteenth century.

Sardà i Salvany was the author of an enormous collection of journalistic, catechesis and Catholic apostolic publications, was one of the founders among many others of the Revista Popular, which was famous due to the publication of El Liberalismo es pecado (1884) [Liberalism is a Sin]. This book became one of the main points of reference for ultra-conservative Catholicism in Spain and Europe during the last half of the nineteenth century and still is today.

Santi Vila thus ends his academic trajectory with a qualification of excellent. He put aside this trajectory in 1999 when he defended his dissertation about the same person, supervised by Jordi Canal, the historian from Olot, at the University of Girona. On the day of the defence he was accompanied by various people, including former ministers Andreu Mas-Colell and Irene Rigau, the rector of the University of Vic, Jordi Montaña, the writer Isabel-Clara Simó, the director of the Institution for Catalan Literature, Laura Borràs, and also the director of the Ramon Llull Institute, Manuel Forcano.