OPINION

"'.-5 (-_ I <,-,, , PRESIDENT OF THE GENERALITAT DE CATALUNYA

th October 1990 will be the fiftieth to crush the military revolt with the help anniversary of the execution of Lluís of the forces of law and order and broad Companys i Jover. The personal and sectors of the working classes. This was political life of the former President of the the start of a predorninantly Generalitat de Catalunya was marked by anarcho-syndicalist social revolution. tragedy, a tragedy which he personifies Companys led a powerless Generalitat as a symbol of the tragedy of his people. which nevertheless dared to legislate and Lluis Companys's political background shape a future in accordance with what starts with the rise and gradual he considered the prime interests of democratic and political progress of the Catalonia; a country which experienced working-class sectors of Spanish society the first massive air raids in history at the beginning of the 20th century, against the defenceless civilian goes on to the triumphal proclamation of population of the cities, the thousands of the II Republic in 1931, and to his becoming an refugees that poured in from the rest of Spain, the uncomfortable ally following the Military coup d'état in incomprehension towards the Catalan national reality Spain in July 1936. Its defeat gave rise to a social and, as a backdrop, the weight of a war which made revolution wherever the forces of sedition had failed, itself more and more keenly felt by everyone at the same time as it caused a cruel, generalised civil everywhere. war. Exile was a brief period of help for the hundreds Lluis Companys took an active part in social movements of thousands of refugees, in a political career as from the time of his training as a Iawyer. He later president of al1 the Catalans, of a country which stood out as an active republican and a labour lawyer suffered the cruelest of cultural genocides under the in the workers' conflicts, something for which he was to regime of General Franco. suffer imprisonment, along with other trade-union Detained in exile in France, he was unwilling to leave leaders. the occupied zone in the search for his son, a profound He was a founding member of the farmers' psychopath, lost in the upheaval of the Nazi military organisation Unió de Rabassaires ( 1920- 192 1 1, advance. The German political police kidnapped him, a member of parliament and an opposer of the and with total disregard for his rights took him to dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera. Spain, in response to a request -which has never been On 14th April 1931 he played a key role, proclaiming cleared up- on the part of the Spanish governrnent. the Catalan Republic and thus forcing the Spanish In Madrid he was tortured and humiliated, and in a Provisional government to do the same. After pretence at a Court Martial, of non-existant legitimacy, occupying a nurnber of posts (civil governor, deputy to he was condernned to death. On 15th October 1940 the Spanish and Catalan parliaments, president of the he was executed in the utmost secret at the Castle Catalan parliament, minister for Marine affairsl, he was of Montiuic in Barcelona. elected president of the Generalitat de Catalunya The exile and death of President Cornpanys is in 1933, following the death of Francesc Macia. impressive on account of his dignity. He accepted full From his party, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, responsibility for political events, telling the tribunal he reaffirmed a nationalist spirit which led him on 6th that he would die with the conviction that he had acted October 1934 to proclaim the Catalan State within the according to his duty and his conscience. And with no Spanish Federal Republic, after a struggle between the rancour whatsoever. Catalan legislative authorities and those of Spain and After his legal assassination, Cornpanys the passionate in the face of the advances of the anti-democratic, and controversia1 political personality became the centralist right-wing forces throughout the state. charismatic figure of a country they wanted to crush. He was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, but was The man is murdered, the rnyth is born. • freed after the triumph of the Popular Front. As president of the Generalitat once again, he managed

JOSEP M. SOLE HISTORIAN