Francesc Macià, a Colonel and Catalan President for Independence

The Struggle for Independence

They say the increase of supporters for the independence of Catalonia has its origin in the sentence of the Spanish Constitutional Court (2010) against the Statute of Catalonia (2006), and also in the financial crisis which we are undergoing –and which highlights even more the financial plundering suffered by the Government of Catalonia under Spain.

Now, the fight of the Catalans for their freedom is part of the history of mankind. The text here presented provides a brief outline about two important figures of Catalonia. They were both called Francesc Macià, and both held the military position of Colonel. However, they are separated by centuries and circumstances. Read more...

Francesc Macià, President of the Catalan Republic

Social and Democratic Commitment

On the 25th of December 1933, the President of Catalonia Francesc Macià died at the Palace of the Generalitat, the seat of the Catalan Government in the very heart of the city of Barcelona. Enormously popular, as proven by his landslide election victory of 1931, Macià was seen off by an enormous grieving crowd showing condolence at his funeral.

Mr. Macià –then known as the grandfather, a familiar, loving moniker– had had a haphazard life dedicated to his patriotic and social ideals –for an independent Catalonia and for a transformational left, though distanced from Marxism. However, neither his family origins nor his first vocation should have brought him there. Born in 1859 to a landowning family of wine and olive oil merchants, he began his career as an officer in the Corps of Engineers, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the Spanish Army and in 1926 he organized a military expedition from Northern Catalonia to liberate Southern Catalonia from Spanish occupation.