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.

It was in fact the Spanish Army's liking for sabre-rattling and the ebullient social situation in Catalonia, with the reiterated discrimination by the Spanish State towards his country, Catalonia –affecting both the working class and the emerging middle class, as well as economic development in both rural and urban society– that gradually led Francesc Macià to become committed to the people and the land, with a growing interest in politics. He thence decided to resign his commission upon election to the Madrid Congress in 1907, even though he was offered promotion to the rank of Colonel.

A dedicated member of Congress in Madrid –more and more active in demanding democratic and social rights for Catalonia– in the midst of the organisation of new political movements, General Primo de Rivera's coup d'etat in 1923 led him to exile in France and Latin America. Now clearly siding with those fighting for the independence of Catalonia, Macià was tireless in coalescing the struggle of the exiled against the dictatorship. In 1926, he prepares an attempt at armed invasion of Catalonia over the Pyrenees –known as the Prats-de-Molló affair. The attempt was a fiasco, and the members of the expedition –with Macià at the forefront– were arrested by the French authorities. However, the trial held in Paris was a huge success, not just because of the insignificant sentence –two months, which had already been served– but because of the international exposure achieved through the allegations made in their defence by their counsel –French First World War hero Henri Torres– and by Macià himself. The trial thus became a stand against the Spanish dictatorship and for the freedom of Catalonia widely broadcast by the press everywhere.

The tireless member of Congress, the former soldier who had opted for the people and their country, became an internationally recognized leader who, upon returning to Catalonia in February 1931, participated in the founding of a new party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) which brought together political parties, social movements and various regional organizations, with the defence of Catalonia and progressive humanism at its core. Those in favour of independence were in the majority to differing degrees, and Macià was their undisputed leader. A few months later, on April 12, 1931, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya swept in with a landslide victory in the elections –as did other Republican groups in other parts of Spain. And on the 14th of April, Macià proclaimed the Catalan Republic –which was to be incorporated in a future Federation of Iberian Republics. Three days later, after protracted negotiations with ministers from the newborn Spanish Republic, Macià accepted that Catalonia should remain a Spanish territory, though now with political autonomy, its own devolved government within a single state, with a stated will to cooperate jointly in the progress of all its territories –a joint cooperation that has not always been forthcoming from the successive governments in Madrid.

Macià died as he led the process of national reconstruction, of social betterment and of democratic enhancement. He was succeeded –both in the party and as President of the Catalan autonomous government– by Lluís Companys, a labour lawyer with considerable experience in politics and in municipal management. Reared rather more towards social action, but with the same firmness in defence of the Catalan cause, Companys had to lead government of the country in very tough times, which became still harder with the Fascist insurrection led by General Franco in 1936. Exiled in Paris, Companys was arrested by the Gestapo and handed over to the Franco authorities. He was summarily executed in Barcelona in 1940 after trial before a military kangaroo court. Thus, no more than 75 years ago, in Europe a head of government elected democratically was executed, a crime that has since gone unanswered –all the Spanish governments since the restoration of democracy have refused to declare the trial null and void, which would be unheard of in any other member state of the European Union recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Catalonia has now dauntlessly staked its future setting course for national sovereignty. She did so in a mass demonstration on the 11th of September –one and a half million people demanding independence in the streets of Barcelona– and in the results of the elections to the Catalan Parliament on the 25th of November, in which the parties favouring a referendum, the right to self-determination without limitations, won 87 of the 135 seats. This is the stake which has, in its first stage, materialised as the Parliamentary concord between Convergència i Unió –the governing coalition– and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya –now the main opposition party– which contemplates a referendum in 2014 on Catalonia becoming the next state in Europe.

It is hoped by many this process will lead to a Republic of Catalonia. That is why it should be remembered –to remind ourselves and the whole of Europe– that on the 25th of December 1933, the President of what was the Catalan Republic, Francesc Macià died. And with the hope of building a modern, fair, equitable state, open to the world and based on social roots. Free. Then as now.

About the author of this article for Help Catalonia

Josep Bargalló Valls

First Minister and Minister of the Presidency of Catalonia 2004-2006
Minister of Education of Catalonia 2003-2004
Councillor in Torredembarra Town Council (1995-2003)
President of the Ramon Llull Institute (2006-2010)
From 2010 he is Professor of the University Rovira i Virgili

@josepbargallo

Other articles by this author:

Heirs of a Defeat
A Europe of Everyone, also of the Catalans
Is Spain afraid of Occitan?
The Catalan fiscal deficit: Catch-22 or sovereignty
Catalan language in schools: When judges want to be legislators
Spanish Education Minister against Catalan Schools
What is more, I am a Catalan
No Law Against Democracy

This article was first published on Dec, 25th, 2012

Read other Special Colaborators articles here

Read more »

“No one forces you to speak Galician”

I always try to avoid conflicts that are condemned to gridlock from the start. But sometimes when I hear absurd things I have to respond to them.

I’m not against any language or nation, but I can’t stand hate speech and absurd phrases that are put in the heads of simple-minded people. The maxims they repeat later, even if they sound funny, can be dangerous.

Even though the following conversation I had with a Galician is pretty common, it still makes me think about things a little:

Someone approached me and asked me a question that I didn’t understand. He seemed to be a normal guy and really seemed to have a question. I could not have known that he was Galician. I guess that’s not something that I could guess by looking at his hairstyle or the way his lips moved when he said certain words, because I’m not Sherlock Holmes.

I politely told him that I hadn’t understood him and I asked if he could repeat his question. Without thinking, I asked him this in Catalan, because it’s the language I usually use around here. It had never crossed my mind that the words I spoke out of politeness were rather like bait for a fish—a fish full of hate and frustration toward the culture that this man was in the midst of.

“You make me speak Catalan,” he started to shout. “In Galicia we don’t make anyone speak Galician and here you always make everyone speak Catalan.”

“Who makes you?” I tried to figure out where his problem was coming from, but the man was just shouting and it was impossible to have a fruitful conversation.

“Speak to me in Galician or Mandarin if you know it, because the more languages we know, the richer we become.” I tried calming him down but there was no way to communicate with him, because he just kept repeating the same words. Finally, I shrugged my shoulders and I left, so we wouldn’t waste our time.

I regret not having pressed him to give me an answer to my question about who was making him speak Catalan (all Catalans, I guess...) and how exactly they were pushing him around to speak it. I surmise that neither the obligation nor the pressure to speak Catalan were very onerous, because this Galician man didn’t seem to know a single Catalan word, not even for a courteous gesture or a rude insult.

Anita Janczak

Read more »

The Catalan democratic rebellion

A longstanding sense of unfinished business in the democratisation of Spain has moved to a new stage of crisis

Just over a week ago, on 9 November, and coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world gazed at a small place on the North-East coast of the Iberian Peninsula. In this place, over 2 million people over the age of 16 (2,305,290 persons, to be exact) disobeyed the Spanish conservative government and went to vote. This ‘referendum’, which had been declared illegal repeatedly by the Spanish constitutional tribunal (a highly conservative and politically-controlled branch of the judiciary), was carried out instead under the protection of the Catalan government and with the aid of over 40,000 volunteers.

The international press focused on the results of the ballot and reported widely that 80 per cent voted in favour of Catalan independence. But in a way this missed the point. What is really important about the Catalan 9-N, as it has come to be called, is not actually the result. The thing that matters is that over two million people engaged in a non-violent act of civil disobedience in a state with a long history of authoritarianism.

This is a genuine moment of rupture in Catalonia, and to a lesser extent in Spain. We can see clearly that the crisis has accelerated what were already difficult political and fiscal relationships between Catalonia and Spain. Three inter-related aspects of this process are especially worth highlighting.

Firstly, the Catalan process, unlike the Scottish referendum, has represented the clash of two different political and democratic cultures. Spain’s historically rooted authoritarian traits have come to the fore, with a Spanish government refusing to enter into any kind of negotiation and maintaining a completely aloof attitude.

For international audiences, it is important to be clear that the separation of powers in Spain is rather fictitious – the state has a constitutional tribunal where the governing party appoints 10 of its 12 members. It’s unsurprising, then, that it tends to rule according to its prevailing political interests. For instance, in the last few months, besides the rulings against a Catalan consultation, it has ruled against an Andalusian law designed to develop social housing from the large housing stock that is held by publicly rescued banks (following large-scale evictions of people hit by the crisis). Furthermore, the same tribunal suspended another Catalan law, the aim of which was to try and alleviate the consequences of the crisis on families that are struggling to pay their heating and water bills. These two examples are not anecdotal: they reinforce the very real sense that many people in Spain now have of a move towards an increasingly authoritarian statism in Spain.

Secondly, the Catalan process has not been led by politicians, but rather by civil society via a series of mass mobilisations. Although the press constantly looks for identifiable leaders, the Catalan process has many elements of what we could more accurately call ‘new politics’. On many occasions, particularly since the demonstration by no less than 1.5 million people in the centre of Barcelona on 11 September 2012, the current Catalan president, Artur Mas, clearly came very close to retreating from his electoral promises. What has kept his political will strong has been the constant pressure from below to maintain the popular outcry for the ‘right to decide’. This highlights the necessity for a type of politics where leaders are not just given an electoral mandate for 4 or 5 years, but rather are held accountable and, if need be, supported by an organised and determined civil society. In Gramscian terms, therefore, what we are currently witnessing in Catalonia is the configuration of a successful counter-hegemonic movement which includes most Catalan political parties, civil society organisations, trade unions and social movements.

Thirdly, the economic crisis has clearly played a part in this process. Even so, I would maintain that it is not mainly the economic crisis that has deepened this movement, but rather the political crisis that Spain is also currently undergoing. The process of democratisation in Spain following the death of Franco, the fascist dictator who ruled Spain for 40 years during the twentieth century, has proven to be insufficient. The elite pact that has kept Spain together since 1978 is steadily being eroded by moves towards deeper democratisation and against the pervasive corruption that has led to the perverse form in which the global financial crisis hit and shaped Spain. Catalonians, together with other progressive social forces within Spain, are questioning the democratic legitimacy of Spain to an unprecedented extent. Fissures papered over in and since 1978 have come to the fore, articulated by newer and more confident political and social movements. The longstanding sense of unfinished business is now intertwined with a sense of a new power to change things at the grass-roots level.

To conclude, these are historical times, and an open-ended journey has started in Catalonia, which may have significant implications well beyond its borders. On Sunday 9 November, still only a few days ago, the people of Catalonia became subjects of their own political destiny. I am one of them and it’s in our hands now to ensure we maintain our strength and leadership and bring about a deepening of democracy in Catalonia and elsewhere.

Mònica Clua-Losada
@DrSaoirse
Lecturer in Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

SPERI. Sheffield Political Economy

Research Institute

Read more »

122 Catalan President Francesc Macià

Download and Share

Francesc Macià, President of the Catalan Republic

a Monday, April 14, 2014

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...

Read more »

The Catalan Government: an Historical and Democratic Legitimacy

a Thursday, November 06, 2014

In the ongoing so-called Catalan process for democracy and in the face of the Spanish government's denial of it —along with that of the vast majority of the Spanish political class— there are some who have tried to focus the debate solely on legality versus legitimacy, ignoring all too often that this is also a debate on popular will versus...

Read more »

The Catalan Republic and the Generalitat de Catalunya

a Tuesday, December 02, 2014

20th Century AC The fall of the regime of Miguel Primo de Rivera gave way to a ‘soft dictatorship’. The weakness of the government which was led by admiral Aznar and General Berenguer propelled the convocation of municipal elections in April 1931; these elections would deeply mark the evolution of the region over the succeeding years. General...

Read more »

The Struggle for Independence

a Wednesday, May 29, 2013

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...

Read more »

Read more »

Paul Preston: ‘There is rejection of Madrid’s such antidemocratic behaviour’

Interview with one of the great Hispanists and signee of the ‘Let Catalans vote’ manifesto

Paul Preston (1946) is one of the great British Hispanists. With a doctorate in history from Oxford University he has written canonical books on 20th century Spain: from a biography of Franco to a history of the war of 1936, passing through a study on the post-war repression (‘The Spanish Holocaust’). He has also written biographies of King Juan Carlos I and Santiago Carrillo, the historical leader of the communist party. Preston, who can speak Catalan and is an admirer of the work of the historian Hilari Raguer and the novels of Antoni Vives, was one of the foreign figures to sign the ‘Let Catalans Vote‘ manifesto, along with Noam Chomsky and Ken Loach. Last week he presented the English translation of ‘Incerta glòria’ (Uncertain Glory), the great novel on the war written by Joan Sales. The event was held in the British Library in London, but minutes before, Preston attended VilaWeb. He was wearing an insignia of the Spanish republican flag on his lapel and talked about the present political situation and the book.

—You signed the ‘Let Catalans vote’ manifesto. Why did you do this?

—I believe that people have the right to decide on their own future. I signed as a way of expressing my democratic solidarity with people who want to vote, everyone who wants to vote. A decision must be taken after civilised discussion. Until there is permission to vote, there cannot be civilised discussion.

—The English press is highly critical of Rajoy.

—The fact is that everyone sees Madrid’s behaviour as antidemocratic. Until Madrid recognises the need for a vote, public opinion in general … there is rejection of such antidemocratic, narrow-minded behaviour from Madrid.

—The Economist tells Rajoy: let the Catalans vote and we will help you to win.

—Apart from the part that comes afterwards —we will help Rajoy—, this is precisely my position. One of the things that stimulates independentism is the economic situation, but Madrid’s behaviour does too. As long as Rajoy continues to deny the vote, independentism will obviously grow therefore they should start with a legal vote. A legal vote would have what there has not been up to now, a civilised debate like in Great Britain, and with all of this a well-conceived vote could be made. The problem is that at the present time it will always be a vote against Madrid, for reasons I perfectly understand. In other words, in a certain way the PP is to blame for it all.

—How do you think Rajoy will react to the criticisms of the international press?

—I don’t know whether they pay more attention to media like the Cope, Libertad Digital and those extreme right-wing media than to the Times, or to the New York Times. Sincerely I don’t know.

—How do you see Spain?

—Badly off. Very badly off. Now I have enough trouble analysing the past than to want to analyse the future…

—What is the solution for Spain?

—I believe the only solution for Spain in the European context, thinking of the economic conditions, is asymmetric federalism giving a lot of power to Catalonia. But I believe (I don’t know, I am a historian not a futurologist!) that total independence will be very difficult. Maybe in the distant future, but I don’t know.

Read more »

The fiscal drainage of Catalonia

Catalonia suffers from a significant fiscal drainage towards Spain in the form of a large fiscal deficit. This is the difference between the Central Government’s public sector spending in Catalonia and the resources extracted from this Autonomous Community, mainly through taxation, by the Central Government.

Fiscal deficit data, all calculated using the same methodology, is available from 1986 until 2011. The average for 1986-2011 is 8% of GDP with a standard deviation around this average of only 0.9. Therefore, one can speak of a structural fiscal deficit that affects the Catalan economy recurrently.

Source: Government of Catalonia

Another way to understand this deficit drainage is to consider the fact that Catalonia contributes 19.5% to Central Government revenues via taxes and only receives 14% of central government spending, either in investment or other public services, while the weight of its population is 16%. These percentages are also the average for the period 1986-2011 and remain constant throughout those years.

Furthermore, we can note that although the fiscal deficit in terms of GDP remains more or less constant over time, it is not constant in terms of euros per inhabitant once the effect of inflation is removed. Between 1986 and 2011, the annual fiscal deficit for every Catalan has gone up from 1,076 to 2,055 euros. This is because the income of Catalonia has grown in real terms during this period.

This fiscal drainage is an important obstacle for the Catalan economy. The consequences are that it discourages growth and reduces welfare for the Catalans. Spain's Central Government has historically refused to correct the problem. Catalonia has often tried to negotiate better fiscal treatment from the Central Government, but without success. In consequence, the only solution is the secession of Catalonia from Spain. However, the reasons to ask for Catalonia’s secession are not only economic. There are other important reasons for independence, such as the continuous attacks of Spain's Central Government against Catalonia’s own culture and language. We hope we do not have to wait a long time to see Catalonia as an independent State. 

Núria Bosch

Professor of Economics. University of Barcelona (UB)

Read more »