The ancient city of Vic is at a crossroads in the middle of a vast plain in the heart of Catalonia. Traditionally, it served as a crop and livestock market. Over the centuries, it became a prime religious and cultural hub. Now it is a very active university city, and that explains the origin of the youth hostel.

History

As an episcopal see, Vic is known as the 'city of saints’. This nickname reminds us of its strong Catholic roots. In fact, the churchman and canon Jaume Collell i Bancells was born here in 1846, so it's no coincidence that the hostel is called Canonge Collell, in homage to this illustrious son of Vic. Like the young people who currently live at the hostel, Canon Collell also studied in Vic. However, he studied at the seminary, where he was ordained a chaplain in 1873 and became the canon of the cathedral in 1880. Throughout this entire period, Collell was a mouthpiece for moderate Catholicism and Catalanism. 

For example, while he contributed to the majority of conservative Catholic newspapers in Catalonia, Jaume Collell also published La Veu de Montserrat (1871) and Lo Catalanisme: lo que és i lo que deuria ésser (1879), and he was also one of the leaders to call the Assembly of Manresa, which gave rise to the Catalanist Union (1892). In the literary field, he was proclaimed mestre en gai saber in 1871 and presided over the Barcelona Jocs Florals literary contest in 1887, 1908 and 1925. Finally, he founded the publications Revista Catalana, Gazeta Montanyesa and Gazeta de Vich when he was a prominent member of the Catalan Language Academy. 

For all these reasons, when the Catalan Youth Institute decided to build a hostel which would primarily be used as a university student residence in 1994, it decided to name it Vic Xanascat hostel. 

The hostel has become a facility available to all Vic residents and is a space of participation; it makes itself available to all social sectors around the region and offers its communal spaces free of charge for activities and talks. In the summertime, it shows its visitors the wide range of tourist, artistic, landscape, food and cultural activities of Vic and its county. 

But it is primarily used as a university residence, and thus it is a tool of internationalisation, given that it houses students from all over the world. Curiously, most of the students come from Mallorca, and perhaps that’s why Vic Xanascat hostel celebrates the Mallorcan Festival every year, among other celebrations. 
But not only students benefit from its facilities. The Club Pati Vic hosts children from far and wide. The groups performing at the Cantonigròs International Festival and the Live Music Market of Vic also sleep at the hostel, with exclusive accommodations on festival days. All of this shows the close relationship between the hostel and the town, a neighbourly relationship among Vic residents and the hostel.

Curiously, the building's structure is quite similar to the Catalan mossos d'esquadra police barracks, and one of the surprising details they share is the blue colour of their walls, given that the architect used the hostel as a pilot test.

In 2000, the architect who created the Palau Sant Jordi, Arata Isozaki, went to Vic Xanascat hostel to make similar construction in Blanes which was ultimately never built.