The Salamanca Documents

After 75 years, Catalonia still awaits the return of the documents. Here three articles about this topic:

From Pillage to Reparation: The struggle for the Salamanca papers

It is a great pleasure to have been asked to talk to you today about the case of the so-called "Salamanca Papers". I greatly appreciate Professor Preston's invitation. I think that there are a couple of things I should say to introduce myself. I have only ever spoken in public in England once before. That was thirty-one years ago, in 1975, at a meeting held in Oxford in protest over the last death sentences decreed by the Franco regime. I hate to think what I must have said. I was born and brought up in England, my father having been a London-born ex-RAF pilot and my mother -still alive and kicking- the eldest daughter of a Catalan surgeon, Josep Trueta. Like several hundred thousand fellow Catalans and Republicans, he went into exile in February 1939, at the end of the Spanish Civil War. His exile in England was prompted not  read more..

A tale of two archives

As Viewpoint's Special Correspondent in Catalonia, I am moved to get into print a version of a talk I gave a few months ago to my old Department, the School of Modern Languages. The topic is one that I have been involved with a little over the past year or so, and it has given me reason to recall with nostalgia the exemplary manner in which, over the past twenty years, the University has become a renowned repository of historical archives, thanks, in particular, to the initiative of former Vice-Chancellor John Roberts in obtaining the deposit of the Wellington Papers in the early 80s and to the vision, commitment and expertise of former Librarian Bernard Naylor and (still going strong) Archivist Christopher Woolgar. The Hartley Library is now a major centre for the study of 19th- and 20th-century British history and Anglo-Jewish relations.  Contrast the way in which the owners of family and institutional papers have entrusted them to the expert care of the Hartley Library read more..

Salamanca Documents Not Yet Returned

After years of non-compliance, the Spanish Minister of Culture promised that the Spanish State would return to Catalonia, by 30th June 2012, all the documents that were looted by Spain during the war and stored at the Spanish Civil War Archive in Salamanca. Months after this deadline, the documents that belong to individuals and to private organizations and were meant to be sent to the Catalan government never made it back. It seems history will repeat itself as with the previous shipment promised by the Spanish Minister of Culture under Spanish president Zapatero, when everything was ready for the return of the documents and the Spanish administration stopped the shipment.

Yet hundreds of boxes full of documents are pending return. For this reason, when on the 26th of April the Spanish Minister of Culture told his Catalan peer that the documents, filed as “war booty” in the General Spanish Civil War Archive in Salamanca, would be returned before the 30th of June, we breathed a sigh of relief.

After facing year after year of non-compliance and delays, Mr. Wert's words were welcome. In this context, it must be taken into account that the last Minister of Culture read more..

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Great War Centenary Widening Gap Between Catalonia, Spain

The 100 anniversary of the First World War has already prompted a degree of controversy in a number of countries, often concerning how to commemorate the conflict. In the United Kingdom, some robust exchanges have taken place, involving also whether it was right to join the war. However, while some countries may be discussing how to remember the tragic events of 1914-1918, in Catalonia and Spain the rift goes much deeper and is contributing to a widening gap between the two. While a book on the 12,000 Catalan volunteers who joined the Allies to fight and often die in French trenches was a hit and quickly sold out, prompting a second edition, Spanish authorities remain silent on the subject. No plans have been announced by Madrid to honour their sacrifice, while the Spanish-language media keep an awkward silence on the subject. This stands in stark contrast with the growing interest felt in Catalonia, where many people still know very little about them (even today they do not feature in standard school textbooks) but are eager to learn more.

In 1914 Spain decided to stay neutral, and broadly speaking elites in Spain proper were rather pro-German. In Catalonia on the other hand, public and elite opinion tended to favor the Allies. There were exceptions on both sides of course, but this was the overall picture. This resulted from a combination of factors, chief among them being the identification in the minds of many between Catalan and Anglo-French values (Catalonia's parliament is the oldest in Europe and Catalan constitutional traditions closely resemble Great Britain's), and the view that an Allied victory may facilitate a change in the political status of Catalonia (conquered by Spain in 1714). American entry into the war, and President Wilson's 14 points, reinforced the latter, in particular because one of the points concerned self-determination.

In the ensuing 100 years, many things happened, including tragic episodes like the 1936-1939 Civil War and the long Franco-era night, followed by a transition to democracy which for more than a few Spaniards went too far (by allowing Catalonia to recover a limited degree of self-government, after prime minister in exile Josep Tarradellas came back in 1977) while for a growing number of Catalans amount to too little. Things which did not happen, however, include a real effort to arrive at a consensus concerning the historical past. This includes the Great War. With the death of General Franco, the regime made many concessions, but they did not include a reexamination of the past and its official version. One of the many consequences of this failure to reach a consensus is that Catalans often felt that the way they saw and told their children about historical events was different, and sometimes diametrically opposed, to what their counterparts in Spain proper did.

Differences over the Great War are thus no exception, but rather part of this trend. Furthermore, they are of course not the reason, nor the main factor, in a growing distancing between Catalan and Spanish public opinion. However, they are a stark reminder that it is very difficult for people to coexist in a single state when radically-opposed views of history clash, leading to mutual fatigue. While many Catalans may find it offensive that Spanish authorities and historians ignore WWI volunteers, many Spaniards rather find it odd that they should be the subject of books and documentaries, or even openly dispute their existence. Something similar happened when a monument to Winston Churchill was inaugurated in Barcelona in 2012, with no Spanish Government representatives present.

Thus, unless a sincere effort is made by both sides to reach a common understanding of the First World War, it is likely that as commemorations in countries like the UK and France proceed, and more and more works appear on Catalan volunteers (hopefully also in English), the gap will just widen. This is just a reminder of how wars do not conclude when guns fall silent, but rather conclude only when all participants (and not just major actors) are able to reach a common understanding of what happened and why. The Great War is not over yet.

Alex Calvo

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Catalonia and the House of Bourbon

Traditional way of displaying Philip V's portrait in Catalonia.

Juan de Borbón, father of Spain's Juan Carlos I.

The House of Bourbon, personified by Philip V, took control of Catalonia and the Kingdom of Spain thanks to a tricky scheme devised by France's Louis XIV agents concerning Charles II's will. It was really a veiled coup d'état, although perhaps it was unavoidable given the historical circumstances. However, the House of the Austrias did not resign themselves to losing the Spanish throne so easily, and they presented their own candidate, Archduke Charles.

We all know what happened next: the War of the Spanish Succession (the first international conflict between European powers) and the end of the empire created by the Catalan kings during the middle ages—Spain would lose Naples, Menorca, and Gibraltar. The destruction from the inside of the Crown of Aragon with the annulment of each state's constitution, and the enforcement of the Nueva Planta decree disassembled a 700 year old state. The new dynasty carried on a bloody suppression of all liberties. Even though some Spanish historians have tried to present Philip V as modernizing, Castel Rodrigo's words in 1715 speak for themselves:

“One must put down everywhere any ill-intentioned hopes the natives might harbor by publicly and solemnly abolishing the rights of the city and of the Principate [i.e. Catalonia], so that they are effectively annulled, eradicated, and burned, and so that no memory remains of them whatsoever.” 

Philip V's government was neither reformist nor revolutionary, and it imposed a new tax on Catalans, known as cadastre, which became the first in the centuries-long economic plundering we suffer to this day. Not coincidentally, Catalans are an industrious people, warriors of a former time who had exchanged sword and battles for looms and textiles. Weapon manufacturing and commerce of liquor became widespread as well.

Later on, during Charles III rule, Catalans' fame as a hard-working people made it all the way to the court through the works of Cadalso, Cartas Marruecas, and even Napoleon wished to incorporate Catalonia to his empire, but, alas, Catalans refused to become French. During the 19th century the Spanish crown had a difficult relationship with Catalonia, whose affiliation ranged from opposition to Isabel II, to Carlism, and Republicanism. Catalans, who are often utopian, would resort to revolution, like in the 1868 revolution, or like in multiple urban revolts. In time they would try to go back to an Austrian model, a dual monarchy, and force a deal with the crown to resolve their uneasy political situation in a liberal Spain unsuccessfully trying to copy the French centralizing ideas. The memory of the Austrian monarchy is so alive that even to this day a painting of Archduke Charles is on display at the entrance of Vic's bishopric.

The early 20th century saw the efforts by Cambó and La Lliga, but Alfonso XIII's support of the military coup d'état by Primo de Rivera put an end to that period. The Second Republic was received enthusiastically in Catalonia, but it ended badly, and the ensuing dictatorship did not reinstate the king. It also spelled terrible anti-Catalan repression which tried to finish off what Philip V had started—Catalonia's annihilation. After that, everything would change so that everything could stay the same. What we know as the transition to democracy, a change without breaking off, brought about yet another reinstatement of the Bourbon monarchy personified by King Juan Carlos I, who has tried to be more amenable, but who has not deviated an inch from the Bourbons' original plan which so much tension and trouble has caused—the Spanish king has never agreed to the kind of commonwealth structure Catalonia so much prefers.

Perhaps the words by Juan de Borbón, the man who would be king and who used the title of Count of Barcelona as an exile during the dictatorship, and father of the current king, were prophetic. When he neared death he changed his mind about being buried in Poblet, where the Catalan kings had been buried during the middle ages, arguing sadly that he did not want to be buried in a land that some day would no longer be Spain.

Bernat Roca, Historian

First published on Monday, September 24, 2012

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Catalan Nationalism and Democracy

Recently, the Spanish government, some public and private television, and other Spanish media, have been recurrently accusing Catalan nationalism of being Nazi and comparing our pro-independence representatives to Hitler and Goebbels.

Leaving aside the fact that Catalan nationalism was born and grew in the second half of the nineteenth century, and was linked to political and economic liberalism, in the thirties Catalan nationalism also defended democracy. Proof of this could be the defense of the Second Spanish Republic against the military rebels who had the support of fascist Italy and nazi Germany. In addition, some exiles in favor of the republic and democracy fought alongside the allies against Hitler and Mussolini, and other exiles of the same side ended up in concentration camps such as Mauthausen.

Antoni Rovira i Virgili

In the late twenties, Antoni Rovira i Virgili wrote En Defensa de la Democràcia (In Defence of Democracy, translated by John Style). This book begins talking about the crisis of democracy, of its faults (it says that democracy is an instrument, not of perfection, but of improvement), of its objectivity, its stability and so on. The author reflects on equality among men, on universal suffrage, on parliament and liberalism (the diversity of ideas and beliefs), and much more.

In February 1940, while in exile, he published an article in Revista de Catalunya titled Les Nacionalitats dins l’Europa nova (Nations in the new Europe), in which among other things he exposed, “If Germany won, it would coercively organize Europe in a completely opposed direction to the principle of nations. The combination of the racist principle and the theory of vital space would turn other people into servants or slaves of the great German of the world.” And a little further on it goes on, “There is an intimate, profound, and indestructible loop, between totalitarianism and imperialism. Whoever is enemy of man's freedom is also enemy of freedom of nations. He who does not respect the independence of the individual can neither love nor respect the independence of communities.”

The whole world must know the truth, that first they called us terrorists and now they are calling us nazis and comparing our political representatives to Goebbels and Hitler!

Francesc Bonastre i Santolària.

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Free or Dead

It was August 2009 when we discovered the character of Ermengol Amill, one of the completely forgotten Catalan national heroes. Therefore we felt like we had the moral obligation to create a biopic in order to internationalize the Catalan conflict. A film is the fastest, the most convincing as well as the most efficient way to help overseas citizens understanding the origin of our main national conflict and, much more, to make them come to understand why now Catalans have started their march to independence. We have just managed to write a novel. It has became a bestseller in Catalonia, being in the TOP 10 most sold books since its first publication in September 2012, as well reaching five editions in just five months—so we will persist in the film.   

Films like Braveheart in Scotland, Michael Collins in Ireland, or The Patriot in the United States, have helped their nations to stand up for themselves and let the whole world understand their wishes for freedom. From the entertainment and mass culture point of view, as well as a historical and documental review, we thought that this sort of production could turn out as a great cultural and commercial product that would catch the attention all around the world.

Free or dead not only explains what the War for Spanish Succession really meant for Catalans and it lets us understand the magnitude of this war, considered by historians as the first world war. The War of Succession was a conflict incited by the English Crown who provoked Catalans into rising up against King Phillip V of the Bourbon, as well as quashed them down when Lord Bolingbroke announced in the middle of the board of negotiation of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713  that defending the rights of the Catalan people was no longer in the interest of England. This treaty radically changed the geopolitics of Europe and America by utilizing the Catalan nation.

The English betrayal that lead to Catalonia's ultimate defeat in 1714 generated a political strifle between the conservatives (Tories) and the liberals (Whigs) in the British Parliament, known as the Case of the Catalans, which left behind feelings of guilt in part of English society, as the pamphlets of the period show, like The Deplorable History of the Catalans,  or as the words that a few centuries later were pronounced by former first minister Winston Churchill: “With kind diplomatic words they were delivered (The Catalans) in revenge to the winner side Spain.”

Therefore the relation between England and Catalonia needed and explanation in order to understand that when there are no friends but just interests, freedom is the price. Soon it will be three centuries since the Catalan nation has been paying that price up to the highest. A lesson that we wanted to point out in our novel Free or dead, a title that evokes one of the slogans written down on the black flags displayed above the walls of Barcelona in 1714.

Let’s hope one day we can see the defense of freedom that Free or dead represents in the big screen, and translated into as many languages as possible. Nothing would make us happier than this.

David de Montserrat @davidmontserrat                                                Jaume Clotet @jaumeclotet

First published at HC on January 17th, 2013

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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

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