Lluís Companys

Lluís Companys i Jover (Tarrós, June 21, 1882 - Barcelona, October 15, 1940) was a Spanish politician and lawyer, of Catalan and Republican ideology, leader of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalonia, Minister of the Navy of Spain in 1933 and President of the Generalitat of Catalonia from 1934 to 1940. Exiled after the Civil War, he was captured in France by the Gestapo, at the request of the Francoist police, and transferred to Spain, where he was tortured, subjected to a court martial and finally shot in the castle of Montjuic.

Early Years

Lluís was the son of a family of well-to-do rural owners in the region of Urgel in the province of Lérida. His father, Josep Companys i Fontanet, was an enlightened man with liberal ideas. His mother, María Luisa de Jover, was of noble origin and Aragonese descent. Lluís was the second of ten siblings, of whom eight survived, five boys and three girls.At the age of eight, his parents sent him to study, as an intern, in Barcelona at the prestigious Liceo Polyglota. There he attended high school and met Francesc Layret, two years older than him.

In 1898 he entered the University of Barcelona to study law. He became involved in political activities of a republican nature, possibly under the influence of Layret, who was also studying Law at the Barcelona university.In 1900 he participated in the founding of the Republican School Association at the university together with Layret. They also published a weekly, The School Defense, in which Companys wrote his first articles. At that time he spoke at his first political meeting, an anti-clerical act held in the Barcelona bullring.

Start of his political activity

Graduated in 1903, he joined the Republican Union of Nicolás Salmerón. In 1906, due to the burning by soldiers of the newsrooms of the Catalan magazines Cu-Cut! and La Veu de Catalunya and the approval, as a consequence, of the Jurisdictions Law, the electoral coalition Solidaridad Catalana was formed. Unión Republicana was divided between those in favor of joining the Catalan coalition, headed by Salmerón, and the opponents who, headed by Alejandro Lerroux, left the party (creating the Radical Republican Party two years later). Companys, like Layret and most of the militancy of the interior regions remained in the Unión Republicana and joined Solidaridad Catalana. Despite its success in the 1907 elections, the coalition soon showed its weakness, disappearing later of the Tragic Week (1909), due to the heterogeneity and diversity of interests of its members. In the repression that followed the Tragic Week, Companys was arrested for the first time, being released as no charges were brought against him.

In 1909 the weakened Republican Union, now basically confined to Catalonia, joined forces with the Center Nacionalista Republicà and the federals in an electoral alliance that ran for the 1910 elections. In April 1910, at the initiative of Joaquim Lluhí, it became a single party, the Federal Nationalist Republican Union. Companys was named president of his youth section.As a result of his intense youth activity, he was arrested fifteen times, being described as a "dangerous individual" in police reports.

On October 17, 1910, Companys married his first wife, Mercé Micó, with whom he had two children, Lluís Companys i Micó (Lluïset), born in 1911, and Maria de l'Alba (like one of his paternal aunts), born in 1915. His eldest son manifested symptoms of schizophrenia during his youth that worsened and complicated in adulthood with bone tuberculosis. The illness of his eldest son was always a source of concern for Companys.

The Federal Nationalist Republican Union had its greatest success in the 1910 elections in which it obtained eleven deputies. However, the death of its leader, José María Vallés, in 1911, led to the disbandment of the party in 1912. This fact coincided with the creation of the Reformist Party of Melquíades Álvarez, into which the less nationalist wing of the UFNR entered, among whose members was Companys. He also entered the orbit of reformism in the republican newspaper La Publicidad, for which Companys worked from 1904 in the Barcelona municipal politics section. There he met José Zulueta, Laureano Miró and Eusebio Corominas. During that time, journalism was Companys' main source of income. He was also the founder of the weeklies La Aurora and La Barricade, of which he was chief editor in 1912.

In 1913 he was a candidate in Barcelona for the Reformist Party in the municipal elections in the Sants-Les Corts district, without being elected. The following year he abandoned reformism although he maintained his relationship with La Publicidad . In this publication he coincided in 1915 with Marcelino Domingo (director of the newspaper, of which Companys was chief editor), with whom he would maintain a very close relationship and share a political career until the advent of the Republic. In May of that year, Domingo, Companys and Layret created the Bloc Republicà Autonomista (BRA), which ran for election the following year. Domingo ran for the district of Tortosa, in Tarragona, where he was from, while Companys, leading a "republican worker candidacy", ran for Roquetas, a district close to Tortosa. Domingo was elected, while Companys was defeated by a wide margin by the dynastic liberal candidate. This candidacy by Companys was the first Republican candidacy in that district.

Until then she had worked as a journalist. In June 1916 he completed his graduation exercises and received a law degree, enrolling in the Barcelona Bar Association. After working as an intern in two law firms, he began to practice as a labor lawyer for worker militants and other impoverished clients, while Companys continued his journalistic work. In September 1916, Companys, Layret and Domingo founded a new newspaper, La Lucha, as the BRA's organ of expression. Companys was the chief editor and responsible for political information, Domingo the director and Layret was the company's financier.

In April 1917 the BRA merged with more than 150 formations to form the Partit Republicà Català (Catalan Republican Party, PRC). La Lucha became their organ of expression. Very ideologized and combative, it published worker and socialist leaders such as Pablo Iglesias and Miguel de Unamuno. La Lucha categorically opposed the war in Morocco, advocated for Catalan autonomy (the PRC was one of the of the main defenders of the Catalan autonomy statute project of 1919) and the allied cause in the First World War. All this led the publication to have frequent problems with censorship.

Marcelino Domingo shared a political career with Companys in the Bloc Republicà Autonomista and the Partit Republicà Català. Both participated in the founding of the Republican Socialist Radical Party and the Republican Esquerra of Catalonia. His roads separated in 1932, when Domingo opted for the PRRS.

During 1917, the PRC had participated in the Assembly of Parliamentarians, a meeting of the majority of Catalan parliamentarians (except those of the dynastic parties) that, with the Cortes closed, advocated the calling of elections to Constituent Cortes, of facing a new organization of the State that would recognize the autonomy of the regions. However, the government's dissolution of the Assembly and the revolutionary strike of 1917 caused the conservative Lliga Regionalista to break away from its Republican allies. Given this, they presented themselves together in the call for municipal elections in November 1917. Companys was elected councilor for the Raval district of Barcelona as part of a radical candidacy.His political positions were then far from Catalanism. As the historian Hilari Raguer narrates, when Manuel Carrasco Formiguera was also elected as councilor in Barcelona, Companys refused to let him pass, claiming that he was a separatist and that he should first shout "Long live Spain!".

The years between 1917 and 1922 were of extreme social violence in Barcelona. It was the era of gunmen in which, on the one hand, the most violent sectors of anarcho-syndicalism, supporters of "direct action" and on the other, squads of gunmen paid by the businessmen, with the intervention of state repression in support of the employers. All this resulted in hundreds of deaths, mostly workers. He then practiced, along with his friend Layret, as a defense attorney for numerous trade unionists approaching anarcho-syndicalism. He also resumed an old childhood friendship with Salvador Seguí ("El Noi del Sucre"; in Spanish, "El Chico del Azúcar" ), who was born in Tornabous, a neighboring town of Tarrós. Seguí's father worked for the Companys family, and both had shared childhood games. In 1918, in an atmosphere of generalized strikes, the government declared a state of emergency and, among many others, Companys was detained for several days. In February 1919 he began the strike at La Canadiense, which lasted almost two months and led to a general strike. Companys intervened in the negotiations between strikers and employers, convinced of the need to establish alliances between anarchist workers and the autonomist republican left. Companys tried to involve the government in the negotiation and, faced with its refusal, he tried to get the Barcelona City Council, of which he was a councilor, to mediate. The mayor's refusal made Companys brand the council a scab, which is why he was imprisoned for a month. The radicalization and the rapprochement to the workerist postulates by Companys and Layret was accentuated during that year. In September, both requested the adhesion of the PRC to the Third International. Although the request never materialized, the move meant that the most centrist and nationalist sectors left the party.

Entrance to the Mola fortress, in Mahón (Menorca), where Companys was deported in 1920.

In December 1919 and January 1920 there was a lockout in Barcelona, an event that marked the triumph of the employers in the social conflict. In November of that year, the civil governor Martínez Anido had ordered the arrest of the labor leaders. Companys, along with Salvador Seguí, Martí Barrera, Josep Viadiu, among other trade unionists, was jailed. On November 30, three days after his arrest, and with thirty-five other prisoners, he was deported to the Castillo de la Mola in Mahón (Balearic Islands).Layret was assassinated when he was about to assume his defense. Despite his deportation, in the legislative elections of December 1920 Companys was elected deputy for Sabadell in the PRC candidacy in the place that the late Layret should have occupied, who held the seat, achieving parliamentary immunity, which freed him from the jail. At the same time, Companys continued with his journalistic work. Although La Lucha had to close in June 1919, after being released from prison he took over the management of the republican newspaper L'Avenir from Sabadell, founded by Layret and in which he was already collaborating. During 1922, he was one of the promoters of the Unió de Rabassaires, a union of non-owner winegrowers that also expanded its scope of action to sharecroppers and tenants, as well as founder of its organ of expression, the bi-weekly La Terra, of which he would also be director. The support of the Unió was transcendental to revalidate his seat for Sabadell in the April 1923 elections.

The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera

In September 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, Captain General of Catalonia, staged a coup with the support of the army and the approval of King Alfonso XIII. The dictatorship lasted more than six years. During it, Companys focused his efforts on strengthening the Unió de Rabassaires, for which he was an advisory lawyer since 1925. The union lent its support to the Republican Alliance, the coordination body for parties and opposition forces to the dictatorship and the monarchy of Alfonso XIII, to which the PRC belonged, with Marcelino Domingo as representative. Created in 1926, it had the radical leader Alejandro Lerroux as a prominent figure. Companys was one of the Republican leaders who participated in the homage Lerroux received in Barcelona in June 1926. His opposition activities were not limited to political and union action: in January 1929 Companys participated from Barcelona in the failed insurrectionary attempt promoted by Sánchez Guerra (precisely who, as president of the Council of Ministers, had dismissed Martínez Anido in 1922), for which he was arrested and spent three months in prison. In December he was one of the signatories of the manifesto published by the PRC in favor of of the understanding between the Catalan republican forces and their coordination with the republicans of the rest of Spain. The result of this appeal, and of the action of the group of Catalan intellectuals grouped around the weekly L'Opinió, was the signing, in May 1930, of the Republican Intelligence Manifesto by representatives of the Catalan republican and left-wing groups of all tendencies, including representatives of the CNT. Among the signatories of the manifesto was Companys. A few days later, the Socialist Radical Republican Party (PRRS), founded the previous year, among others, by Marcelino Domingo, co-religionist of Companys in the PRC, published its first manifesto to which Companys adhered. adhered.

Photograph of several political prisoners imprisoned at the Barcelona Model Prison in November 1930. Among them, Lluís Companys, his son, Angel Pestaña, Joan Lluhí i Vallescà or Emili Granier Barrera.

The signing of the Republican Intelligence Manifesto did not bear fruit in an electoral front or coalition due to divergences between the signatory organizations. For this reason, in October 1930, Companys and other members of his party, as well as independent republicans, called in L'Opinió for the convening of a Conference of Catalan Lefts. in Barcelona between March 17 and 19, 1931. Estat Català participated in it (after overcoming initial reluctance and after the return from exile of its leader, Francesc Macià, the Partit Republicà Català, the group formed around L'Opinió, as well as various republican groups from the Catalan regions, former federal nuclei, some radicals and other recently created nationalist groups.Although Companys was the president of the conference organizing committee, he did not he was able to attend because there was an arrest warrant against him, which forced him to send his opening speech to be read at the conference. companys.

From the conference a new party was born, in which existing people and organizations were integrated: Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). Companys was elected a member of the party's executive. The ERC was a cross-class party, which included in its ranks from rabassaires from the rural world to sectors of the industrial proletariat through the petty bourgeoisie. The political position of Companys, founder of the Unió de Rabassaires and lawyer for numerous anarcho-syndicalist leaders, could be one of the factors of this broad social spectrum. Politically, ERC included pro-independence tendencies, coming from Macià's Estat Catala, the federal republicanism of Companys or the leftism of the L'Opinió group.

Second Republic

The proclamation of the Republic in Barcelona

Proclamation of the Second Republic in Barcelona.

After the formation of Esquerra Republicana, the new party was faced with the dilemma of running or not in the imminent municipal elections of April 12, 1931. The different tendencies within the party had different positions and Companys managed to convince the abstentionists, led by Macià and the sector from Estat Català of the need to participate. Esquerra's proposal was to lead joint Catalan Republican candidacies, but the refusal of Acció Catalana Republicana to join Esquerra in a coalition in Barcelona, finally made it only Socialist Union of Catalonia will participate in the candidacy of Esquerra Catalana. Once the candidacies were designed, Companys was part of the list for the Barcelona city council for the VIII district. As in the rest of Spain, the results constituted a resounding success for the Republican candidacies. Among these, the Esquerra candidacy was the unexpected winner, obtaining 25 councilors, including Companys, while the radicals (in a candidacy of Republican-Socialist Conjunction with the PSOE, the UGT and the federals) obtained 12 councillors. An independent Republican was also elected. Among the non-republican forces, only the Regionalist League with 12 councilors obtained representation.

«Don Luis Companys, Civil Governor of Barcelona», in the article «How the Republic was proclaimed in Barcelona» (Figure, number 1017, page 4, 29 April 1931).

Once the results were known, the ERC leadership tried to agree on an action plan. On the night of Monday the 13th, the party leaders, led by Macià, met without deciding on a strategy, although he was determined to act the following day. In the morning, Companys met with several of the elected councilors from his party, and the group received Macià's order to go to the town hall, which he would also go to. At noon he agreed, along with Nicolau Battestini, Josep Bertran de Quintana and Amadeu Aragay and others, to the town hall. There, they deposed the accidental mayor Antonio Martínez Domingo and, after being acclaimed as mayor by his companions and taking possession of a tricolor flag, Companys went out on the balcony overlooking the Plaza de Sant Jaume and proclaimed the Republic at one in the afternoon. Next, Companys sent a telegram to the president of the revolutionary committee, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora: «This morning, at twelve, accompanied by the elected councilors, I have requested the accidental mayor, Mr. Martínez Domingo, to hand over the mayor's staff and of the charge, which he has done by registering his protest. I greet you: Companys". An hour later, Macià also addressed the town hall and, from the same balcony, at a quarter past two in the afternoon, proclaimed the "Catalan State, which we will cordially try to integrate into the Federation of Iberian Republics”. Immediately, Macià crossed the square, entered the Provincial Council (the current Palace of the Generalitat) and announced that he was taking charge of a provisional Government for Catalonia, subsequently dismissing the highest judicial and military powers in the territory. In the afternoon, the Republic was proclaimed in Madrid and the revolutionary committee was constituted as a provisional government, under the presidency of Niceto Alcalá Zamora.

Companys and the co-religionists who had proclaimed the Republic came mainly from the PRC and the L'Opinió group and formed the republican wing of the party, which faced the Catalan fact by integrating Catalonia within a federal solution. Macià, for his part, represented the faction from Estat Català, in favor of the independence of Catalonia, even allowing some kind of confederal solution. something that he did not achieve, since Macià preferred that he take on a role with less public exposure, that of civil governor of Barcelona. On the same day, April 14, Macià sent Companys to take over the civil government, which in the situation of confusion had been occupied by the radical Emiliano Iglesias. The appointment of Companys as the new civil governor was approved by the Minister of the Interior of the provisional Government of the Republic, Miguel Maura and officially endorsed on April 24. Companys continued with the responsibility of civil governor until June, when he resigned, being replaced by Carlos Esplá. Companys declared that he was abandoning the responsibility of governor to resume his political work and prepare the electoral campaign for the imminent elections to Constituent Cortes.

The proclamation of the Catalan Republic by Macià opened a conflict with the newly formed Provisional Government of the Republic. To resolve it, three days later, three ministers of the provisional government (the Catalans Marcelino Domingo and Lluis Nicolau d'Olwer, plus Fernando de los Ríos) arrived in Barcelona to negotiate with Macià (a process in which Companys did not participate), Reaching an agreement whereby Macià renounced the Catalan Republic in exchange for the commitment of the provisional Government that it would present a statute of autonomy for Catalonia in the future Constituent Courts, previously "approved by the Assembly of Catalan Town Halls", and the recognition of the Catalan government, which would cease to be called the Government Council of the Catalan Republic to take the name of Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia. The new Generalitat of Catalonia would assume the functions of the four Catalan provincial councils and would be in charge of organizing an assembly with representatives of the City Councils until it was elected by universal suffrage. This assembly, called the Provisional Council of the Generalitat, was constituted through indirect elections held on May 24 among all the Catalan councilors and had two main objectives: to present the paper on the autonomy statute and to organize the plebiscite for its approval. Companys was elected a member of the Provincial Council representing the judicial district of Sabadell. The first meeting of the Provisional Deputation took place on June 9. In it, the eleven deputies who would form part of the statutory report were elected. Companys was among them, although he did not directly participate in the drafting of the draft, since a reduced drafting commission made up of five members was elected. The table of the new assembly was also elected, with Jaume Carner, an independent close to Esquerra, being elected., as president and Lluís Companys and Josep Irla, both belonging to Esquerra, as vice presidents. Companys would provisionally replace Carner in January 1932, when he was appointed Minister of Finance.

The Constituent Courts

In the general elections of June 28, 1931, Companys was elected deputy for the province of Barcelona, on the Esquerra Catalana list, which included candidates from the ERC, USC, and independents, and which won a huge victory over the League. Companys was the second most voted candidate in his constituency, after Josep Suñol i Garriga. Macià marginalized positions of responsibility in Catalonia, the party executive decided to send Companys to Madrid to lead the Catalan parliamentary representation. In the Constituent Assembly, Companys was the head of the Esquerra parliamentary group from its constitution, in July 1931, until September 1932. He was also the president of the Catalan minority, a group made up of the Catalan deputies who supported the Statute of autonomy of Catalonia. Although he did not He wanted to be part of the Board of the Cortes, he was part of the Permanent Deputation, as well as the Agrarian Reform Commission, proof of his party's interest in participating not only in matters related to Catalan autonomy. In the words of Companys after the constitution of the Cortes: «The Catalan Deputies have come here to defend our Statute to the fraternal understanding of the Deputies and their democratic sense; but we have also come to intervene in other issues that affect the greatness of Spain: the Constitution, the agrarian reform, the social laws».

In the Constituent Courts, Companys had a very relevant participation, leading the minority, along with Lluhí. In his capacity as president of the minority, he established direct and personal contact with Macià, who was the one who set the positions that the minority should adopt in the Cortes. Initially Companys was very critical of the provisional governments headed by Alcalá-Zamora, whom he saw as not very audacious in their reform policy: «in the country there is a nervous and widespread desire to be governed in a revolutionary way; there is a desire for immediate and subversive reforms that would be constructive, because today to govern in a revolutionary way is to fulfill the governmental sense of politics." to the detriment of the CNT, with which Esquerra had a tacit agreement, which had made it possible to maintain social peace in Catalonia in the first months of the Republic. He also intervened intensely in constitutional debates, especially on issues related to Catalan autonomy. After the appointment of Manuel Azaña as president of the Council of Ministers in October 1931, Esquerra became one of the key supporters of the government, especially after the Radical Party abandoned the government coalition, although it did not want to enter the executive. At the same time, Companys continued his journalistic activity, founding and directing La Humanitat, which would later become the official organ of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. His first issue hit the streets on November 9, 1931. His role as director of La Humanitat allowed him to retain his influence within the party leadership.

Cover of the status of autonomy of Catalonia of 1932

In November 1931, Companys was plagued by the Bloch scandal, a controversial matter related to the contacts that the French financier M. Bloch (convicted of fraud) had with several ERC parliamentarians during a brief visit to Madrid. The matter had a lot of repercussions in the political and journalistic media throughout Spain, calling for resignations and political responsibilities. Given this, Companys presented Macià with his resignation as leader of both the ERC group and the Catalan minority. Neither the party executive nor Macià accepted the resignation, so the ERC deputies voted against accepting his resignation and Companys, who was immersed in constitutional debates, continued in his position. In front of his group, he voted in favor of the Constitution. He also intervened in the deliberations around the religious question, supporting the limitation of the presence of the Catholic Church in the public sphere, or in those related to women's suffrage, showing himself to be in favor of the extension of the vote to women. He also voted in favor of agrarian reform. Since May 6, 1932, the date on which the discussion on the Statute of Catalonia began in the Cortes, approved in a referendum by Catalan citizens but incompatible in some aspects with the new Constitution, until its approval on September 9, Companys actively intervened in the debates. Despite the fact that the parliamentary process involved a severe cut in the text sent from Catalonia, both Companys and his colleagues from the Catalan minority voted in favor of approving the bill. statute.

Once the statute was approved, the center of the political activity of the Catalan parties moved from the Madrid Parliament to the new Parliament that was to be constituted in Barcelona, since for the first time an autonomous political space had been created in Catalonia and it was necessary for each party to consolidate its position in this new scenario. The result of this is that the activity of the deputies of Esquerra was drastically reduced in the period after the approval of the statute. Upon being elected autonomous deputies, many Catalan deputies, although they did not abandon their act in the Cortes, focused on the Parliament of Catalonia its political action.

President of the Parliament of Catalonia and Minister

In November 1932, the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia took place, in which Companys was the ERC candidate for Lleida. The elections gave an overwhelming victory to Esquerra Catalana, a coalition of ERC with Unió Socialista de Catalunya, the federal, Unió Catalanista and the Radical Autonomist Party, which obtained 67 of the 85 seats at stake. Companys obtained a seat and on December 13 he was elected president of the Parliament of Catalonia, by a large majority (seventy votes in favor and one in white, yours surely). In this way, Companys became the second authority of Catalan autonomy, only after the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Francesc Macià. In addition, in the event that he died or was removed, Companys would automatically become the new president. Companys expressed his excitement at being elected president of parliament as follows:

If I have ever felt deep emotion and above the weight of great responsibility, it has been at this solemn moment. It is the process of a lifetime of accident that is crowned with the designation with which you have just honored me; a life in which I have found strong bitterness, well compensated with the representation of the historical hierarchy that you have entrusted me: that of president of the restored Catalan Courts.

After his election, although he did not relinquish his seat in the Cortes, he resigned as president of the Esquerra Republicana parliamentary group, taking charge of the Miquel Santaló group.

His work at the head of the Catalan chamber was unremarkable, nor did he play an institutional role. On the contrary, his actions were markedly partisan, as demonstrated by various public statements and political rallies in which he took part during the first half of 1933.

Companys remained at the head of the Catalan chamber until mid-1933, when he left it to join the government of the Republic, the last one presided over by Manuel Azaña during the first republican legislature. The ministerial crisis had its origin in the serious illness, throat cancer, suffered by Jaume Carner, Minister of Finance, elected deputy as an independent in the Esquerra candidacies. Since February, Azaña had supervised the ministerial work and, come June, with the bulk of the reformist legislation already approved, he asked the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora, for permission to replace him. However, the president decided to open a ministerial crisis, in an attempt to tilt the government coalition to the right. The socialist refusal to participate in a government with the radicals, left Azaña as the only candidate for president of the Council, with a government in which the feds entered and, for the first time, ERC. The fundamental purposes of Esquerra to sustain the government They were, on the one hand, to prolong the legislature fearing a possible triumph of the right in the elections. On the other, to press for the transfer of the powers contemplated in the new statute. In this context, Companys entered the government, replacing Carner as Catalan minister, but without taking charge of his portfolio, but rather one of very low profile, that of Marina, to the annoyance of Companys himself and his party, who aspired to get that of Industry and Commerce. The degree of personal harmony between Azaña and Companys was not very high.

The Ministry of Marina, on the Paseo del Prado in Madrid (now the headquarters of the Navy).

Companys was Minister of the Navy between June and September 1933. He held the portfolio with "reluctance and without interest", developing an unremarkable job, with few bills submitted to Parliament. Companys' departure from the government it was the result of the withdrawal of confidence from Alcalá Zamora to Azaña, after the elections for members of the Court of Constitutional Guarantees. The successive governments of Lerroux and Martínez Barrio, in which Esquerra participated but not Companys, managed the country until elections were called in November 1933. Returning to Barcelona, Companys turned again to Catalan politics. In October he had presided over the closure of the II Extraordinary Congress of ERC, appearing as Macià's natural successor, and in November he was a candidate in the general elections, being the candidate with the most votes for the Barcelona-city constituency, although it was thanks to to a trick by Francesc Cambó, who ordered the vote of his faithful to Companys with the aim of exceeding the threshold of 40% and not having to repeat the elections, as provided by the electoral legislation. In this way, although Companys was the candidate with the most votes, the Lliga obtained 14 of the 15 seats corresponding to the majority in Barcelona-city. The results in all of Spain represented a resounding defeat for the left-wing republican parties (except the Esquerra Catalan) that practically disappeared from the chamber (13 seats) and a reduced representation for the PSOE (59 seats), leaving the CEDA as the party with the most deputies (202 seats), with the radicals (115 seats) in second place.

Companys's life also underwent changes during 1933. He separated from his wife Mercé Micó and became romantically linked to Carme Ballester, a party militant who had formed part of Estat Catalá.

President of the Generalitat of Catalonia

At the death of Francesc Macià (in the photo), Companys was elected president of the Generality of Catalonia and leader of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.

On December 25, 1933, the first government of the two-year radical-Cedista government, headed by Alejandro Lerroux, was just formed, Francesc Macià died, unable to recover from an appendicitis operation. Companys appeared as the natural successor of the Catalan president, especially after the party's expulsion of the L'Opinió group, which had taken place in September and whose members could have been his rivals at the time of lead the party and the Catalan government. The responsibility of electing the new president of the Generalitat was in the hands of Parliament, which, meeting in extraordinary session on December 31, elected Companys president with 56 votes in favor and 6 abstentions, including his own and that of the deputies. of the Catalan League. Previously, the Esquerra parliamentary group had met to choose their party's candidate. In addition to Companys, two other candidates were being considered as an alternative: Carles Pi i Sunyer and Humbert Torres. The identification of Companys as the republican, workerist and rabassaire option was what made him the chosen one.However, his election was far from arousing the unanimous support that the figure of Macià did arouse. The most nationalist sectors of his own party questioned his Catalan career, so his internal support was not general. His link with anarcho-syndicalism aroused misgivings, while the most conservative sectors of Catalonia questioned his ability. Furthermore, in contrast to the figure of Macià, who was considered the representative of all of Catalonia, Companys was seen as a party man.

After taking office, and unlike the outgoing government, he created a government of republican concentration, in which advisers not only from his party, from the Unió Socialista de Catalunya or from Acció Catalana Republicana, but also from the Partit Nacionalista participated Republicà d'Esquerra, the party created by the dissidents of L'Opinió. Of the seven councilors that made up his government, only three held the same position in the government headed by Macià. Throughout his tenure as president, Companys would preside over governments with a broad political base.

One of the first measures promoted by the new government was the Law on Cultivation Contracts, which sought to replace rabassa morta contracts with others more favorable to vineyard tenants, so that rabassaires could access the ownership of the land they cultivated under less restrictive conditions than those existing then (the tenants could buy the land they worked after a period of uninterrupted cultivation of fifteen years; it was also stipulated that lease contracts had a duration of six years). Catalan municipal elections held in January), on March 21, 1934. It entered into force on April 11. However, the new legislation was directly opposed by d e the owners, grouped in the Catalan Agricultural Institute of San Isidro, and the Catalan League, which requested and supported the appeal of unconstitutionality presented by the Government of the Republic, chaired by the radical Ricardo Samper before the Court of Constitutional Guarantees on May 4th. The central executive's argument was that Article 15 of the 1931 Constitution reserved jurisdiction over contractual obligations to the State, while the Generalitat argued that by virtue of Article 12 of the Statute, legislation on agrarian social policy corresponded to it.. On June 10, 1934, the court declared, by a vote of 13 to 10, that the Parliament of Catalonia had no jurisdiction over the issue and therefore annulled the law, which immediately led to street protests in Barcelona and various parts of Catalonia. Given this fact, interpreted by Esquerra as an attack on the Catalan self-government, its deputies, together with those of the Unió Socialista de Catalunya, withdrew from the Spanish Cortes. For its part, two days after the sentence, the government Catalan approved in Parliament a text identical to the one declared unconstitutional, also specifying its retroactive nature with respect to the initial date of entry into force. For their part, the forces of the Spanish Republican left supported the Catalan demands. Thus, during the debate on the Law of Crop Contracts in the Spanish Courts, on June 21, Azaña stated that "the autonomous power of Catalonia is the last republican power left standing in Spain".

Shortly there was a reorganization of the Catalan government. On June 28, Josep Dencàs took over the Interior portfolio, replacing Joan Selves i Carner, who had died unexpectedly. An ERC militant, Dencàs was the founder and leader of the Joventuts d'Esquerra Republicana-Estat Català (JEREC), which formed the pro-independence wing of Esquerra. The JEREC were directly opposed to anarcho-syndicalism, because they considered that union conflicts diverted the attention of the workers from the truly important struggle, the "national" one. To do this, they had a shock force, the squamous. After his appointment, Dencàs appointed Miquel Badia, a friend and collaborator in the JEREC, as head of Public Order. The Dencàs-Badia tandem adopted expeditious methods against union organizations, which would be highly criticized. An unclear aspect of the events of October 1934 in Barcelona was the reason why President Companys entrusted the Interior portfolio to someone ideologically removed, which even from within the Catalan government had been described as fascist, and at times of maximum social tension. The historian Jordi Rabassa points out two possible reasons. One would be that Companys needed to apply a more forceful policy in the field of public order and did not want to appear as the person responsible for it, for which he would need Dencàs as a scapegoat. Another would be that, in case of failure, Companys could get rid of the pro-independence supporters of Estat Català, the strongest group opposed to his policies within his party. Dencàs himself would affirm that Companys had appointed him Minister of the Interior to prepare a pro-independence revolt. During the following months, Dencàs would threaten to resign several times, having not received the go-ahead from the Catalan government to unleash the independence attempt, which had also not authorized the purchase of weapons in Europe to prepare for the rebellion.

Conflict between the central and autonomous governments continued throughout the summer. On June 26, the Samper government announced that it was declaring the new Catalan law null and void, as it was the same law that had been declared unconstitutional and that it was considering legislating by decree in relation to conflicts of jurisdiction between state governments. and autonomous. Faced with parliamentary opposition, the Samper government renounced its claims to legislate by decree, submitting to a vote of confidence on July 4 in order to resolve the conflict in accordance with the Constitution and the Statute. On July 10, the Generalitat approved several decrees to apply the law that was the subject of controversy, but at the same time, both governments sought an agreement that would put an end to the conflict. The resolution was not helped by the fact that, unlike Macià, Companys did not have the same personal relations with Alcalá Zamora. During the month of July, the Minister of Justice of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Joan Lluhí, met with Samper, while the Catalan executive officially declared that it was their intention to make the legislation on cultivation contracts conform to the "laws "basicas" of the Republic. Meanwhile, the process of transferring powers to the Generalitat of Catalonia continued. On September 13, the Generalitat published some new decrees that modified the initial ones following what was required by the state government. Despite other disagreements between the two administrations (which even produced a new complaint by the Samper executive against the Catalan for insults and contempt for statements by Companys against a law that regulated the jurisdiction of the Generalitat over the personnel of the administration of justice An agreement was reached on September 21, but this agreement was not accepted by the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (CEDA), so that when Samper presented the agreement, declaring that the modifications introduced eliminated the unconstitutionality of the original law, Gil-Robles, leader of the CEDA, announced that they were withdrawing their support for the government, for which it resigned. Three days later the creation of a new government was announced, under the presidency of Alejandro Lerroux and the presence of three ministers of The CEDA The republican parties (except the radical) immediately expressed their rejection of this formula.

The proclamation of the Catalan state

After three CEDA ministers entered the government of the Republic and when the revolutionary strike called by the socialists broke out in October in various parts of the country, on October 6, 1934, Companys, after accusing the new Spanish government of "monarchist" and "fascist", he proclaimed the "Catalan State" within the Spanish Federal Republic, inviting left-wing republicans from all over Spain to establish a provisional government of the Republic in Barcelona. According to what Companys declared during his subsequent trial, on July 5 Joan Lluhí would have asked Azaña, who was in Barcelona after attending the funeral of his former collaborator Jaume Carner Romeu, on behalf of the Catalan executive, to head a provisional government of the Republic in the Catalan capital, but he would not have accepted.

Companys had the support of the left-wing Catalan forces and the workers' parties and organizations, grouped in the Alianza Obrera. With the important exception of the CNT, which had refused to support the strike.

This fact is one of the most controversial of the Second Republic and especially of those carried out by Companys. There are innumerable interpretations of the fact. Stanley G. Payne, in The First Spanish Democracy (1995), states that "Companys was a basically sensible man who had been subjected to extreme pressure from radical Catalanists for months." Pere Anguera, in The Spain of nationalisms and autonomies (2003) points to the social radicalization of the independence movement and the Catalanism of the Marxist parties, in a climate of political crisis between governments of different signs in Madrid and Barcelona. In this context, Companys would have tried to stop a social revolution, unleashing a political movement at the head of which he placed himself, with the purpose of deactivating the social revolt. He would also have tried not to lose control of the Unió de Rabassaires and would have influenced the increasingly radical and Catalan positions of independentistas and workers' parties. Josep Sánchez Cervelló, in the chapter dedicated to Companys in In the fight for History (2012), interprets that the formal trigger for the entry of the CEDA into the executive were the tensions within his government between supporters of maintaining a close alliance with the forces of the republican left of the rest of Spain (position defended by Joan Lluhí, Minister of Justice), the independentistas (with Josep Dencàs, Minister of the Interior, at the head), and those who fundamentally promoted a socialist revolution (Joan Comorera, leader of the USC and Minister of Economy and Agriculture), those that led Companys to radicalization and the proclamation of October 6, with which he intended to assume a Catalan profile that according to his critics he would have lacked until then.

General Domingo Batet reduced the uprising initiated by Companys with minimal bloodshed.

After the military intervention led by the commander-in-chief of the IV Organic Division, General Batet, Companys was arrested along with the full Catalan government and imprisoned on the ship Uruguay, anchored in the port of Barcelona, which was requisitioned to be used as a prison. Companys and his advisers remained confined in Uruguay until January 7, 1935, when they were transferred to the Modelo prison in Madrid to be tried by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees.

The consequences for Catalan autonomy were disastrous. On October 7, with the country still under a state of war, General Batet appointed Mayor Francisco Jiménez Arenas as accidental president of the Generalitat. On January 2, the Cortes approved a law suspending the statute of autonomy, naming a Governor General of Catalonia who assumed the functions of the President of the Generalitat and its Executive Council. In November, Amadeu Hurtado, President of the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Catalonia had tried to find a solution that save the Catalan self-government from prosecution of its leaders, proposing that the presidency of the Generalitat, in the absence of its president, and the president of parliament, be occupied by the vice-president, Antonio Martínez Domingo, of the Lliga. However, Companys disavowed any possible arrangement, preventing any collaboration from the Esquerra Republicana.

Companys and its advisors were tried for rebellion by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees. On June 6, 1935 by ten votes in favor and eight against, Companys and members of his government were sentenced to thirty years of major imprisonment and absolute disqualification. Subsequently, Companys and the directors Comorera and Lluhí were transferred to the El Puerto de Santa María prison (Cádiz), while the rest of the directors were interned in the Cartagena prison.

Despite this, he was a candidate for the Front d'Esquerres in the February 1936 elections for the Barcelona-city constituency, being elected deputy.

The restoration of the Generalitat of Catalonia

After the victory of the Popular Front in the elections held on February 16, 1936, amnesty was not long in coming. After Portela's resignation, Azaña formed a government on February 19. Faced with the continuous riots and demonstrations demanding that the October prisoners be released, the President of the Council proposed an amnesty decree to the Permanent Deputation of the Cortes. On the 21st the decree-law was approved and instructions were given to urgently release the prisoners. That night, Companys and his companions from the Puerto de Santa María, Comorera and Lluhí prison, were released and transferred to Madrid, passing through Córdoba, where they spent the night. The following day, they met in Ocaña with the other four directors, who came from Cartagena and with the entire group of friends and family who had traveled from Barcelona to receive them. That night they arrived in Madrid.

Civil War

Freed in 1936 after the victory of the Popular Front, in anticipation of a possible military coup, he appointed Captain Frederic Escofet as General Commissioner of Public Order of Catalonia.

After the failure of the coup d'état on July 18, which was mainly faced by anarchist militias, President Companys signed a decree on July 21 to create the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia. On September 11 of that year, La Vanguardia collected some of his statements with the headlines "the President condemns acts of terrorism" and "it is necessary to put an end to acts committed outside of Justice". But it was not only about public statements, framed in the struggle of the Generalitat government with the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias: Companys was a fundamental piece, given the position he held, in a task that involved many more people, and whose most visible faces were the councilors Ventura Gassol and Josep Maria Espanya, the president of the Parliament of Catalonia, Joan Casanovas, and the rector of the University of Barcelona, Pedro Bosch Gimpera. Altogether, 9,206 people left the Catalan ports (including among them the Cardinal and Archbishop of Tarragona Vidal y Barraquer, captured by FAI militiamen and saved in extremis from being assassinated) to Marseille and Genoa, half of them during 1936, using passports, visas and safe-conducts, many times false, issued by the Generalitat of Catalonia. In his capacity as president, Companys signed an agreement with the delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross that provided that anyone could leave the area of Spain in which they were, which did not bear fruit as the Franco authorities refused to sign it as well.

El lehendakari del Gobierno de Euzkadi, José Antonio Aguirre Lecube, y el presidente de la Generalidad de Cataluña, Lluís Companys, en Barcelona. Author: Jesús Elosegi Irazusta (16 October 1938).

Throughout the war he headed the Government of Catalonia trying to maintain unity among the parties and unions that supported him. This was very difficult due to the tensions between communists and socialists grouped in the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia with the anarchists of the National Labor Confederation, the latter supported by the POUM. As of October 1937, his confrontations with the Republican Government of Juan Negrín, installed in Barcelona, followed one another, and in April 1938, after the occupation of Lleida, he wrote a letter to the President of the Spanish Government, complaining about the arbitrary actions he was committing. and the marginalization suffered by the Catalan Government. Almost at the same time, the new Francoist administration agreed, through a law promulgated in Burgos on April 5, with the signatures of the Minister of the Interior Ramón Serrano Súñer and General Franco, the formal repeal of the statute of Catalonia

Exile

After Franco's victory in the Battle of the Ebro, the offensive on Catalonia began on December 23, 1938. On January 3, Franco's troops crossed the Ebro in a crucial move for the fate of the offensive. Since then, the republican troops have beaten a retreat, without managing to establish any effective line of resistance. On January 15, Tarragona fell and from then on, Franco's aviation bombarded Barcelona day and night. that a state of war was declared, more than two years after the start of the war. At the request of the President of the Council, Negrín, and despite already knowing that the war was lost, on January 20 Companys sent a radio message to the Catalan people asking for a last resistance against the Francoist troops that were advancing on Barcelona. The following day, Negrín summoned Companys to an urgent meeting. In it, he told her that Barcelona was indefensible and that in a few days it would be irretrievably occupied by the Francoist army. For this reason, he told him that the Generalitat had to evacuate Barcelona.On the 22nd, Negrín ordered the state agencies to leave Barcelona and go to Gerona and Figueras. The next day Companys prepared to leave. Although he had considered staying in Barcelona and waiting in his office for the new authorities, Companys left Barcelona at three in the morning on the 24th. The night before he had dinner with his friend Josep Andreu i Abelló, president of the Court of Cassation of Catalonia. Both traveled by car through the deserted streets of Barcelona. Andreu narrated that last night walk of Companys in the capital of Catalonia:

It was a night like I'll never forget. Silence was total, a terrible silence, as is only seen at the climax of a tragedy. We went to Sant Jaume Square and said goodbye to the Generality and the city. It was two o'clock in the morning. The vanguard of the nationalist army was already in the Tibidabo and near Montjuïc. We didn't think we'd ever come back.

On the 26th, the Francoist vanguard took Barcelona. Tens of thousands of refugees were heading, together with the retreating Republican troops, to the border. After passing through San Hilario Sacalm and Darníus, accompanied by the councilors Tarradellas, Sbert and Pi i Sunyer, as well as Andreu i Abelló, Companys arrived on January 30 at Mas Perxés in Agullana, barely five kilometers from the border along a road mountain (avoiding the agglomeration of refugees in La Junquera). There he met with him, on February 4, the lehendakari Aguirre, a friend of Companys, who had traveled from Paris to Catalonia to organize the evacuation of the Euzkadi Government offices in Barcelona and of the Basque refugees and who had made him Companys promised to accompany him on his way into exile. On February 5, Azaña and Martínez Barrio left the country, accompanied by Negrín. Initially it had been agreed that the five presidents would leave at the same time, but finally Azaña and Negrín went ahead. Hours later, they were followed by a delegation made up of Companys, Aguirre and senior officials from the Generalitat and the Basque Government. At kilometer 8 from Agullana towards La Bajol, escorted by Commander Escofet and his men, they turned off along a goat track, ascending the Lli pass and then descending towards Les Illes. On the way down they met Negrín who was returning to Spain after accompanying Azaña to France. José Antonio Aguirre, later recalled in his writings: «Few people have known as I have moments of intimacy with Companys, which is when men are discovered as they are... that man was plunged into a deep despondency... I encouraged him saying that peoples do not die like men and that the hour of our triumph would come... "it's not that..." he replied, my concern at this moment is focused on all those compatriots of mine who are fleeing without protection and on my sick son"... he confided to me that all his savings did not reach the equivalent of two thousand dollars and added..." that money is not for me, I had it outside to attend to the healing of my poor son who is in a sanitarium in Belgium... I will starve if necessary, but my son will not, no. Aguirre wrote that he took the matter to the first meeting of the Basque government in Paris agreeing to help Companys financially in the first moments in France.

Both the Generalitat and the Catalan exiles experienced serious economic difficulties because the Catalan government, pressured by ministerial order from Negrín, handed over its treasury funds to the central government of the Second Republic. This was done by the Minister of Finance Josep Tarradellas on February 2 before crossing the border. Not having their own resources, the Catalan exile was subject to financial aid from the SERE chaired by Negrín or the JARE de Prieto.

Placa commemorattiva del paso de los cuatro presidentes (Azaña, Martínez Barrio, Companys and Aguirre) ubicadoda en el collado de Lli, entre La Bajol y Las Illas (France).

After passing through Perpignan, he moved to Paris, where his wife, Carme Ballester, was already located, settling on Boulevard de la Seine near the modest representation that the Generalitat had established on Rue Pepinière. His situation there was far from comfortable. Companys had become the target of criticism from all sectors of Catalanism (both those who went into exile after the outbreak of the war and those who arrived in France after the fall of Catalonia). They accused him of being to blame for all the ills that Catalonia had suffered. Companys was blamed for not confronting the revolutionaries who virtually took power in Catalonia after the failure of the uprising, for having let them do it and, therefore, indirectly, for being co-responsible for the victims of revolutionary violence and the bad image that such excesses had projected abroad. He was also blamed for not having been able to maintain his role as president and that of his party as the dominant force in Catalonia and for having become a puppet first of the anarchists and then of the communists, which would have paralyzed the process of political and cultural recovery. Catalans initiated with the Renaixença. Companys confessed to Rafael Tasis that he was concerned about the attitude of many Catalan exiles towards him, attributing the blame for many things, considering him not very Catalanist and more associated with Spanish republicanism, as well as blaming him for of having been deceived by false promises.

One of his first decisions in exile was to form the Ramon Llull Foundation to protect the Catalan language and culture in March 1939. It was directed by prestigious exiles such as the Catalan Pompeu Fabra, and the Andalusian Pablo Picasso as honorary president from the plastic arts section.

When the Second World War was declared, the only representative political body of Catalonia and its only symbol was the Presidency of the Generalitat since the Catalan government had been dissolved and Parliament could not meet as its deputies were dispersed. With Catalanism divided and the French authorities imposing restrictions on political activities, Companys decided to set up the National Council of Catalonia. It was to be a national representative body in exile. Consulted the most relevant personalities, they proposed that no politician who had held an official position in Catalonia not participate and that Companys resign from the Presidency of the Generalitat. Companys opted for an intermediate route, constituting a Consell with five cultural personalities. But this body was of no consequence because three months later Companys was arrested and shot another two months later.

Arrest, extradition to Spain and execution

A couple of Montjuic Castle where Companys was shot on 15 October 1940

Companys's presence in Paris had aroused reluctance on the part of the French authorities, who wanted him out of the capital for his radicalism and for agitating the masses of refugees. As a result, Companys left Paris in June 1939. Thanks to the efforts of Joan Casanelles, a former deputy and friend of Companys, the president and his wife settled in the Breton town of La Baule-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique). From there he frequently traveled to Paris, both to keep abreast of the affairs managed in the Parisian office of the Generalitat, and to visit his son. Lluís, who was admitted to a sanatorium due to his serious mental illness. In May, her daughter Maria and her husband Hèctor Gally had left for Mexico. Despite his daughter's pleas, Companys decided to stay in France so as not to lose contact with his son. With the French defeat before Nazi Germany and the signing of the capitulation, the Companys couple remained in the occupied zone. After the fall of Paris into the hands of the Germans (June 14), the Spanish ambassador in France, José Félix de Lequerica, asked the new authorities that all Spanish exile organizations and political institutions be dissolved. With the collaboration of the German authorities, the embassy staff was able to seize all the assets of these organizations. After the signing of the armistice, Ramón Serrano Suñer, Minister of the Interior, sent the Secretary General of the General Directorate of Security to France, with the aim of locating the Republican leaders who were still in France, obtaining their capture and handing them over to Spain.. Thanks to the confiscated documentation, on August 8 the authorities of the German occupation zone received a list with 800 names for their arrest and delivery to the Francoist authorities. On August 13, 1940, agents of the German military police arrested Companys in a house in La Baule-les-Pins, next to Nantes, and handed him over to the Francoist authorities on August 29, 1940.

Monolith erected on the Paseo de Lluís Companys de Barcelona. Made of Montjuic stone, on it is a medallion with the figure of Companys. At its side, a bronze statue of about two meters high representing a girl, Conxita Julià, with a handkerchief. Conxita wrote poems to Companys while he was in prison at the Puerto de Santa Maria prison. On his return to Barcelona, he gave him one of his handkerchiefs.

The Spanish policeman Pedro Urraca Rendueles handed over Companys to the government of General Franco across the Irún border. He was transferred to the General Security Directorate in Madrid, where he remained until October 3, 1940, where he was tortured. From there he was sent to the castle of Montjuic, which served as a prison. There he was tried by court martial on October 14. His public defender was the artillery captain Ramón de Colubí. As he had been tried in absentia and in retroactive application of the Law of Political Responsibilities by a special court in Barcelona, he was only tried and sentenced for "Adhesion to the military rebellion », in a single day by a summary military court without guarantees. After a trial that lasted a few hours, he was sentenced to die by firing squad. The dictator Franco gave the "informed", so the execution took place at dawn the next day, October 15, 1940, in the moat of Santa Eulalia in the castle of Montjuic. He did not want to be blindfolded and died saying: «Per Catalunya!» ("For Catalonia!").

In the 1990s, the German Helmut Kohl and the French François Mitterrand apologized on behalf of their respective countries for having collaborated in the arrest and deportation of Lluís Companys. In June 2013, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya sued in Argentina against the Spanish State, on the occasion of the crimes of the Francoist side against republican charges.

On December 21, 2018, the Government of Spain chaired by Pedro Sánchez agreed in a Council of Ministers held in Barcelona to condemn the summary trial to which Companys was subjected and to restore his honor. At the moment, this did not imply the annulment of the sentence, which must be promulgated by law. A month later, the Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado delivered the documentation in Mexico to Companys's granddaughter that recognizes the "restitution of full dignity" of the president.

Legacy

In 1943, Ángel Ossorio Gallardo, the politician and lawyer who had defended him after the events of October 1934, wrote Life and sacrifice of Companys.

In 1979, the city council of Barcelona, the first democratically elected since the Republic, agreed to proceed to change the name of the Salón de Víctor Pradera, a promenade that was located between the Arc de Triomf and the Ciudadela park. Since then, the avenue has been called Paseo de Lluís Companys, and in 1997 a sculpture was erected there as a tribute to him.

In July 2001, the Montjuic Olympic Stadium, where the athletics events for the 1992 Barcelona Summer Olympic Games were held, received the name of Lluís Companys, according to a resolution of the Barcelona City Council at the proposal of Workers Commissions of Catalonia.

In 2005, a monolith was erected in the Santa Eulalia moat of Montjuic Castle, opposite the place where Companys was executed. The inauguration had an institutional character under the presidency of the President of the Generalitat, Pasqual Maragall.

In 2014, the Espai Lluís Companys interpretation center was inaugurated in his hometown, El Tarròs, with a permanent exhibition dedicated to his figure, work and historical context.

Filmography

• Forn, Josep Maria. Companys, process to Catalonia1979.