LLUÍS COMPANYS, THE EXECUTED CATALAN PRESIDENT

Today, The Grandma wants to remember and homage Lluís Companys i Jover, the President of Catalonia who was executed by firing squad in 1940 under the dictatorship of Franco.

Companys was born on a day like today in 1882 and lived the proclamation of the Catalan Republic, the Spanish Civil War, the exile, a fake trial and an illegal execution. 

 

He is the only European elected President executed in the history.

History helps us to understand our present because we are the result of our past. The words of Lluís Companys are alive as never were and now, Catalan people know that we will suffer again, we will fight again, and we will win again.

Lluís Companys i Jover (June 21, 1882-October 15, 1940) was a Catalan politician. He was the President of Catalonia, from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.

He was a lawyer and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) political party. Exiled after the war, he was captured and handed over by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, to the Spanish State of Francisco Franco, who had him executed by firing squad in 1940.

Born in El Tarròs, on June 21, 1882, into a peasant family with aristocratic roots, he was the second child of ten. His parents were Josep Companys and Maria Lluïsa de Jover. His parents sent him to Barcelona in order to study at the boarding school of Liceu Poliglot. Later, after obtaining his degree in law from the University of Barcelona, where he met Francesc Layret, Companys participated in the political life of Catalonia from a young age.

In 1906, as a result of the military attack on the offices of Catalan newspapers Cu-Cut! and La Veu de Catalunya, and after the passing of the Ley de Jurisdicciones, Law of Jurisdictions, which made speech against Spain and its symbols a criminal offence, he participated in the creation of Solidaritat Catalana.

Later, he became affiliated with the ephemeral Unió Federal Nacionalista Republicana, where he was president of the youth section. He was investigated for his intense youth activities and was jailed fifteen times, being classified after the Tragic Week of Barcelona as a dangerous individual in police records.

With Francesc Layret, Companys represented the left-wing labour faction of the Partit Republicà Català, Catalan Republican Party, for which he was elected local councilor of Barcelona in 1916.

More information: The Culture Trip

In November 1920, he was arrested together with Salvador Seguí, known as El Noi del Sucre, Martí Barrera and other trade unionists and he was deported to the Castell de la Mola in Maó, Menorca. Shortly afterward, Layret was assassinated while preparing his defence.

Despite having been deported, Companys was elected member of parliament for Sabadell in the 1920 Spanish legislative elections, taking the place of Layret, who would have taken that seat had he not been assassinated. This gave him parliamentary immunity, which secured his release from prison.

Companys was one of the founders of the Unió de Rabassaires in 1922, where he worked as lawyer and director of the La Terra magazine during the years of the Primo de Rivera regime in the 1920s

Detained again, he was unable to attend the Conferència d'Esquerres, Conference of Leftists, held from March 12 to 19, 1931 that produced the political party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Republican Left of Catalonia; however, he was elected as an executive member of that party, representing the Partit Republicà Català.

Thanks to the bonds between the Spanish labour movement and the Spanish trade union movement, the election of Companys to this position gave the ERC great prestige amongst left-wing public opinion as it would otherwise have been regarded as a party of the progressive petty bourgeoisie.

In the 1931 Spanish local elections ERC won a surprise victory in Barcelona and other municipalities of Catalonia.

After knowing the results, in April 14, Companys, who was elected a city representative, and other ERC candidates together with the Party's leader Francesc Macià, decided to take over by surprise the office of Mayor and assaulted the City Hall.

At gunpoint, the transitional Mayor was deposed and Companys was proclaimed new Mayor. Subsequently, he hung a tricolour Spanish Republican Flag from the City Hall's balcony and proclaimed the Republic. Shortly after, Francesc Macià proclaimed the Catalan Republic within the Federation of Iberian Republics, a project that was later abandoned after gaining the promise of regional devolution and the restitution of the Catalan Generalitat, as an autonomous government, from the new Republican government.

More information: Barcelonas

After controlling the Barcelona City Hall, Macià ordered Companys to take the office of Gobernador Civil of the Barcelona province, provincial political authority, which at that time held considerable powers, policing included, which had been controlled by republican radicals during the process of the Republic proclamation.

Macià probably wanted a less public office for Companys, whom he thought of as a political rival. Companys ran as a Barcelona provincial candidate in the December 1931 Spanish Legislative Elections. After gaining a seat he led the ERC representation and the Catalan minority group in the new Republican Parliament.

He described his political objectives in Madrid as: We, the Catalan members of the Parliament, have come here not only to defend our law of autonomy, Statute, and the fraternal and democratic understanding of the members of Parliament; but, also to participate in matters that affect the greatness of Spain: the Constitution, the agrarian reforms and social legislation. 

In 1932 Companys was elected Speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia.

After the death of Francesc Macià in December 1933, at that time presiding over the Generalitat of Catalonia, Companys was elected the successor President of the Generalitat by the Catalan Parliament.

In October 6, 1934, Companys led a Catalan Nationalist uprising not supported by the centre and conservative Catalan representatives, against the centre and right-wing republican government, and proclaimed the Catalan State, Estat Català, within the Spanish Federal Republic, for which action he was arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison.

This action was seen as an attempt at a Coup d'État as Companys revolted against the newly elected center-right republican government and joined the Asturias miners revolution.

Companys asked Manuel Azaña, who happened to be in Barcelona during the events, to lead a newly proclaimed Spanish Republican government, a proposition that Azaña rejected. After the 1936 election and the victory of the left-wing coalition Frente Popular, he was set free by the new government and the Catalan government was restored.

More information: El Nacional

When the Spanish Civil War began shortly after, in July 1936, Companys sided with the Second Spanish Republic against the Nacionales rebels and was instrumental in organizing a collaboration between the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, which was sponsored by his Catalan government, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a revolutionary anti-Stalinist communist party, and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarchist syndicalist trade union.

During the war, Companys attempted to maintain the unity of his political coalition, but after the Soviet Union's consul, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, threatened that his country would cut off aid to Catalonia, he sacked Andreu Nin from his post as minister of Justice in December 1936.

Exiled to France in 1939 after the Civil War, Companys had passed up various chances to leave France because his son Lluís was seriously ill in a clinic in Paris.

He was arrested in La Baule-les-Pins near Nantes on August 13, 1940, and detained in La Santé Prison. He was then extradited by Nazi German authorities to the Spanish government in Madrid in early September 1940 and imprisoned in the cellars of the headquarters of the Dirección General de Seguridad, State Security, at the Real Casa de Correos in Puerta del Sol.

He was held there for five weeks, kept in solitary confinement, tortured and beaten, while senior figures of the Francoist State visited his cell, insulted him and threw coins or crusts of bread at him.

In a military trial which lasted less than one hour and lacked legal guarantees, he was accused of military rebellion and sentenced to death.

During the trial Companys was defended by Ramón de Colubi, a young soldier who had fought the war on the side of the rebels. Surprisingly, Colubí defended Companys with courage to the point of receiving threats and risking his own life. Colubí asked Franco to pardon Companys, but was ignored.

As a consequence of his role as defence attorney, Colubí was forced to go into exile. Víctor Gay Zaragoza, a Catalan writer found that Companys and Colubí were relatives.

More information: ARA

All these efforts were useless and Companys was executed at Montjuïc Castle in Barcelona at 6:30 a.m. on October 15, 1940. Refusing to wear a blindfold, he was taken before a firing squad of Civil Guards barefoot and, as they fired, he shouted Per Catalunya!, For Catalonia!.

He is buried at the Montjuïc Cemetery, near the castle. The cause of death was given as traumatic internal haemorrhage.

The main stadium used for the 1992 Summer Olympics, located on Montjuïc, is officially named in his memory. 

In 1998 a monument to Companys was installed near Arc de Triomf, on Passeig de Lluís Companys in Barcelona. A friend of Companys, Conxita Julià, is portrayed next to Companys' image in the monument. Several streets and squares in many cities and villages of Catalonia are named Lluís Companys after him.

His personal archive is located in the Pavelló de la República CRAI Library -University of Barcelona. It consists of correspondence about him, as well as discourses and declarations between 1936-1938.

More information: Pinterest

 

 

My smallness could not hope 

for a more dignified death.

MHP Lluís Companys i Jover

1640, JUNTA DE BRAÇOS LEAD TO THE CATALAN REPUBLIC

Today, The Grandma has been reading about La Junta de Braços, the Assembly of Estates of the Principality of Catalonia that assumed the sovereignty and enacted a series of revolutionary mesures which had to lead to the Catalan Republic in 1640.

The Reapers' War, in Catalan Guerra dels Segadors, also known as the Catalan Revolt or Catalan Revolution, was a conflict that affected the Principality of Catalonia between 1640 and 1659, in the context of the Franco-Spanish War of 1635-1659.

Being the result of a revolutionary process carried out by Catalan peasantry and institutions, as well as French diplomatic movements, it saw the brief establishment of a Catalan Republic and the clash of Habsburg and Bourbon armies on Catalan soil over more than a decade.

It had an enduring effect in the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), which ceded the County of Roussillon and the northern half of the County of Cerdanya to France, splitting these northern Catalan territories off from the Principality of Catalonia.

The Junta de Braços or Braços Generals (States-General) was, during the early modern age, an institution of the Principality of Catalonia, convened by the Generalitat of Catalonia in cases of emergency or urgency. It was composed by the representatives of the Catalan Courts who at that time were in Barcelona.

The decision to convene the Junta de Braços was to be taken by the three deputies and the three oïdors that formed the Generalitat. It was constituted following the same system of the Catalan Courts, that is, by bringing together the members of the three estates of the realm: the ecclesiastic formed by the clergy, the military formed by the nobility, and the popular formed by royal towns and cities of the country. Only those who lived in Barcelona (or who were at that time) were summoned, due to the urgent nature of the issues that had to be raised and the precarious communications of the time made it impossible for a general call for all of Catalonia. This favored the presence of a majority of Barcelona residents, and of a greater number of nobles who lived in the city; and the presence of the ciutadans honrats (honorable citizens) of Barcelona was accepted, even though on an individual basis.

The Principality of Catalonia, in Catalan Principat de Catalunya, was a medieval and early modern state in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula. During most of its history it was in dynastic union with the Kingdom of Aragon, constituting together the Crown of Aragon.

Between the 13th and the 18th centuries, it was bordered by the Kingdom of Aragon to the west, the Kingdom of Valencia to the south, the Kingdom of France and the feudal lordship of Andorra to the north and by the Mediterranean Sea to the east.

The term Principality of Catalonia was official until the 1830s, when the Spanish government implemented the centralized provincial division, but remained in popular and informal contexts. Today, the term Principat (Principality) is used primarily to refer to Catalonia, as distinct from the other Catalan Countries, and usually including the historical region of Roussillon in Southern France.

The first reference to Catalonia and the Catalans appears in the Liber maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, a Pisan chronicle (written between 1117 and 1125) of the conquest of Mallorca by a joint force of Northern Italians, Catalans, and Occitans.

At the time, Catalonia did not yet exist as a political entity, though the use of this term seems to acknowledge Catalonia as a cultural or geographical entity. The counties that eventually made up the Principality of Catalonia were gradually unified under the rule of the count of Barcelona.

In 1137, the County of Barcelona and the Kingdom of Aragon were unified under a single dynasty, creating what modern historians call the Crown of Aragon; however, Aragon and Catalonia retained their own political structure and legal traditions, developing separate political communities along the next centuries. Under Alfons I the Troubador (reigned 1164-1196), Catalonia was regarded as a legal entity for the first time. Still, the term Principality of Catalonia was not used legally until the 14th century, when it was applied to the territories ruled by the Courts of Catalonia.

Its institutional system evolved over the centuries, establishing political bodies analogous to the ones of the other kingdoms of the Crown (such as the Courts, the Generalitat or the Consell de Cent) and legislation (constitutions, derived from the Usages of Barcelona) which largely limited the royal power and secured the political model of pactism.

Catalonia contributed to further develop the Crown trade and military, most significantly their navy. The Catalan language flourished and expanded as more territories were added to the Crown, including Valencia, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Sicily, Naples, and Athens, constituting a thalassocracy across the Mediterranean. The crisis of the 14th century, the end of the rule of House of Barcelona (1410) and a civil war (1462-1472) weakened the role of the Principality in Crown and international affairs.

The marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 laid the foundations of the monarchy of Spain. In 1492 the Spanish colonization of the Americas began, and political power began to shift away towards Castile. Tensions between Catalan institutions and the monarchy, alongside the peasants' revolts, provoked the Reapers' War (1640-1659), who saw the brief establishment of a Catalan Republic. By the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659) the Roussillon was ceded to France.

During the War of Succession (1701-1714), the Crown of Aragon supported the Archduke Charles of Habsburg. 

After the surrender of Barcelona in 1714, King Philip V of Bourbon, inspired by the French model, imposed absolutism and a unifying administration across Spain, and enacted the Nueva Planta decrees for every realm of the Crown of Aragon, which suppressed the main Catalan, Aragonese, Valencian and Majorcan political institutions and rights and merged them into the Crown of Castile as provinces, ending their status as separate political entities.

More information: Barcelona Metropolitan

Catalunya triomfant,
tornarà a ser rica i plena.
Endarrere aquesta gent
tan ufana i tan superba.

Catalonia triumphant
Shall again be rich and abundant.
Drive away these folks
Who are so proud and arrogant.

Els Segadors, National Catalan Anthem

2017 CATALAN GENERAL STRIKE, DIGNITY VS. TYRANNY

Today, The Grandma has been remembering the general strike that was held in Catalonia on a day like today in 2017 to protest against the violence of the Spanish police over the Catalan population who was voting in a peaceful referendum.

Voting is a right, the most important thing in a democracy. If you attack your peaceful population, you are not a democracy, you are a tyranny, a dictatorship or an absolutist monarchy, or the three at time.

Catalan separatists held a general strike on 3 October 2017 following Catalonia's referendum on independence two days earlier.

The referendum, which was held in defiance of Spanish national court orders, resulted in over 900 people injured as the national police attempted to prevent Catalans from voting. The violence galvanized separatist support for the strike, whose planning predated the crackdown, and led to endorsements from the Catalan government, the Catalan branches of the country's two largest labour unions, and pro-independence cultural groups.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, including 700,000 in Barcelona, participated in the strike. Despite high tensions, protests were civil, festive, and without incident, similar to prior pro-independence rallies.

While protesters targeted Spanish police and national government sites, other effects included suspended public transportation and port activities, cancelled university classes, and closed businesses small and large. Immediate effects of the strike included an emergency meeting called by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior and a rare televised address by Spanish King Felipe VI that condemned Catalan disloyalty and notably did not mention police violence during the referendum.

Catalan president Carles Puigdemont announced that the regional government would declare unilateral independence, which it did later that month.

On 3 October, two days after the referendum, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators blocked roads across Catalonia, including main thoroughfares in Barcelona. Farmers blocked highways with their tractors.

More information: The Intercept

By 9:30 a.m., the Barcelona bus and subway systems were almost entirely halted. Catalonia's railway company suspended service, the national railway ran minimally, and the ports of Barcelona and Tarragona closed, as did places of work from small stores to the large, wholesale food-trading market Mercabarna. Universities cancelled classes and the large public market La Boqueria was nearly empty. The strike included the staff of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art and Sagrada Família basilica, and Barcelona's football team, FC Barcelona.

Barcelona's airport and most other large industries, however, ran without disruption. Many students and farmworkers participated. By midday, in Barcelona, tens of thousands of people occupied the city's major streets -Avinguda Diagonal, Gran Via, Via Laietana- en route to the major demonstrations at the city's administrative center, Plaça Sant Jaume, and the intersection of Barcelona's other city squares at Ronda de la Universitat. Demonstrators gathered before the region's town halls before a planned action at 6 p.m. Barcelona city police later estimated the city's crowd to be 700,000 people in size.

The Spanish police were a focal point of protest as a response to their actions during the referendum. A manifesto from the Board for Democracy, read from atop a car, called for withdrawal of Spanish security forces and more dialogue in lieu of force. It charged the state with aggressive violation of the public's fundamental rights and democratic liberties.

Protesters chanted, Spanish police get out! Demonstrators surrounded the hotels housing Spanish police to demand they leave Catalonia, which was also demanded by Catalan president Carles Puigdemont.

In the small towns of Calella and Pineda de Mar, protests led some hotels to eject their Spanish police guests. Protests at the National Police Corps station in Barcelona continued from the day prior for its role in repressing the referendum. Demonstrators also protested the Spanish Delegation to Catalonia and showed broad contempt for the Spanish press, whom they accused of manipulative reporting and casting separatists as greedy and violent.

Despite high tensions, protests were civil, festive, and without incident, similar to prior pro-independence rallies. In one case, a protester who threw a beer can into riot police was surrounded by fellow protesters who chanted We are a people of peace and encouraged him to leave.

More information: El Nacional

Firefighters and the Catalan police acted in an improvised role as peacekeepers at some protests. In one instance, the Catalan police defused a volatile standoff by convincing the Spanish police to leave. Posts on social media encouraged peaceful protest and resistance to incitement. The Catalan government forewarned against plainclothes officers who may infiltrate gatherings to sow discord. Some shops were forced to close by protesters who graffitied strikebreakers on their storefronts.

Protesters also sought to maintain momentum from the referendum. Some wore the Estelada in yellow, red, and blue. Crowds sang Catalan singer Lluís Llach's L'Estaca and the Catalan anthem, Els Segadors. On the Via Laietana, they chanted Withdraw the forces of occupation and The disgrace of Europe to the tune of the rock song Seven Nation Army.

The strike led the Spanish Ministry of the Interior to call an emergency meeting, and Spanish King Felipe VI to give a rare televised address that blamed Catalan leaders and the referendum for destabilizing the nation and showing disloyalty towards the powers of the state -a state that represents Catalan interests. He did not mention the police violence during the referendum, the main cause for the strike. Barcelona's mayor condemned the speech for its lack of solutions and appeal for dialogue. Catalans responded with a cassolada protest, in which residents publicly made noise with pots and pans.

The union of the Spanish military police compared circumstances in Catalonia to the violent 1981 peak of the Basque conflict, in a warning to police. The police union asked Spanish politicians to protect or withdraw those stationed in Catalonia. The security forces deployed to Catalonia were put on standby for the upcoming week. On the first night of the strike, their union filed complaints: that the Catalan police had not fulfilled its duties by not enforcing the Spanish court ban of the referendum, and that 200 officers were kicked out of a Calella hotel following a threat from the town's mayor.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy remained unrepentant, but met with opposition parties in Madrid. The spokesman for his party derided the political strike, compared the separatist function to Nazi indoctrination, and called for Catalan president Puigdemont to be banned from public office. Puigdemont, in turn, charged the Spanish government with returning to the authoritarian dictatorship of Franco. The first night of the strike, Puigdemont said that the Catalan government would declare independence within a week. Later that month, Catalonia declared its independence.

Red Pepper said that the action was perhaps the first large-scale workers' strike against state repression in Europe for over 40 years with solidarity between workers across professions: dockworkers refusing to accommodate armed police boats, firefighters protecting demonstrators, and farm workers creating blockades with tractors.

More information: The Guardian

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

LLUÍS COMPANYS, THE EXECUTED CATALAN PRESIDENT

MHP Lluís Companys i Jover

Today, The Grandma wants to remember and homage Lluís Companys i Jover, the President of Catalonia who was executed by firing squad in 1940 under the dictatorship of Franco.

Companys was born on a day like today in 1882 and lived the proclamation of the Catalan Republic, the Spanish Civil War, the exile, a fake trial and an illegal execution. He is the only European elected President executed in the history.

History helps us to understand our present because we are the result of our past. The words of Lluís Companys are alive as never were and now, Catalan people know that we will suffer again, we will fight again, and we will win again.

Lluís Companys i Jover (June 21, 1882-October 15, 1940) was a Catalan politician. He was the President of Catalonia, from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.

He was a lawyer and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) political party. Exiled after the war, he was captured and handed over by the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, to the Spanish State of Francisco Franco, who had him executed by firing squad in 1940.

Born in El Tarròs, on June 21, 1882, into a peasant family with aristocratic roots, he was the second child of ten. His parents were Josep Companys and Maria Lluïsa de Jover. His parents sent him to Barcelona in order to study at the boarding school of Liceu Poliglot. Later, after obtaining his degree in law from the University of Barcelona, where he met Francesc Layret, Companys participated in the political life of Catalonia from a young age.

The Grandma homages MHP Lluís Companys

In 1906, as a result of the military attack on the offices of Catalan newspapers Cu-Cut! and La Veu de Catalunya, and after the passing of the Ley de Jurisdicciones, Law of Jurisdictions, which made speech against Spain and its symbols a criminal offence, he participated in the creation of Solidaritat Catalana.

Later, he became affiliated with the ephemeral Unió Federal Nacionalista Republicana, where he was president of the youth section. He was investigated for his intense youth activities and was jailed fifteen times, being classified after the Tragic Week of Barcelona as a dangerous individual in police records.

With Francesc Layret, Companys represented the left-wing labour faction of the Partit Republicà Català, Catalan Republican Party, for which he was elected local councilor of Barcelona in 1916.

More information: The Culture Trip

In November 1920, he was arrested together with Salvador Seguí, known as El Noi del Sucre, Martí Barrera and other trade unionists and he was deported to the Castell de la Mola in Maó, Menorca. Shortly afterward, Layret was assassinated while preparing his defence.

Despite having been deported, Companys was elected member of parliament for Sabadell in the 1920 Spanish legislative elections, taking the place of Layret, who would have taken that seat had he not been assassinated. This gave him parliamentary immunity, which secured his release from prison.

Companys was one of the founders of the Unió de Rabassaires in 1922, where he worked as lawyer and director of the La Terra magazine during the years of the Primo de Rivera regime in the 1920s

MHP Lluís Companys i Jover

Detained again, he was unable to attend the Conferència d'Esquerres, Conference of Leftists, held from March 12 to 19, 1931 that produced the political party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, Republican Left of Catalonia; however, he was elected as an executive member of that party, representing the Partit Republicà Català.

Thanks to the bonds between the Spanish labour movement and the Spanish trade union movement, the election of Companys to this position gave the ERC great prestige amongst left-wing public opinion as it would otherwise have been regarded as a party of the progressive petty bourgeoisie.

In the 1931 Spanish local elections ERC won a surprise victory in Barcelona and other municipalities of Catalonia.

After knowing the results, in April 14, Companys, who was elected a city representative, and other ERC candidates together with the Party's leader Francesc Macià, decided to take over by surprise the office of Mayor and assaulted the City Hall.

At gunpoint, the transitional Mayor was deposed and Companys was proclaimed new Mayor. Subsequently, he hung a tricolour Spanish Republican Flag from the City Hall's balcony and proclaimed the Republic. Shortly after, Francesc Macià proclaimed the Catalan Republic within the Federation of Iberian Republics, a project that was later abandoned after gaining the promise of regional devolution and the restitution of the Catalan Generalitat, as an autonomous government, from the new Republican government.

More information: Barcelonas

After controlling the Barcelona City Hall, Macià ordered Companys to take the office of Gobernador Civil of the Barcelona province, provincial political authority, which at that time held considerable powers, policing included, which had been controlled by republican radicals during the process of the Republic proclamation.

Macià probably wanted a less public office for Companys, whom he thought of as a political rival. Companys ran as a Barcelona provincial candidate in the December 1931 Spanish Legislative Elections. After gaining a seat he led the ERC representation and the Catalan minority group in the new Republican Parliament.

He described his political objectives in Madrid as: We, the Catalan members of the Parliament, have come here not only to defend our law of autonomy, Statute, and the fraternal and democratic understanding of the members of Parliament; but, also to participate in matters that affect the greatness of Spain: the Constitution, the agrarian reforms and social legislation. 

In 1932 Companys was elected Speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia.

Catalan Government in prison, 1934

After the death of Francesc Macià in December 1933, at that time presiding over the Generalitat of Catalonia, Companys was elected the successor President of the Generalitat by the Catalan Parliament.

In October 6, 1934, Companys led a Catalan Nationalist uprising not supported by the centre and conservative Catalan representatives, against the centre and right-wing republican government, and proclaimed the Catalan State, Estat Català, within the Spanish Federal Republic, for which action he was arrested and sentenced to thirty years in prison.

This action was seen as an attempt at a Coup d'État as Companys revolted against the newly elected center-right republican government and joined the Asturias miners revolution.

Companys asked Manuel Azaña, who happened to be in Barcelona during the events, to lead a newly proclaimed Spanish Republican government, a proposition that Azaña rejected. After the 1936 election and the victory of the left-wing coalition Frente Popular, he was set free by the new government and the Catalan government was restored.

More information: El Nacional

When the Spanish Civil War began shortly after, in July 1936, Companys sided with the Second Spanish Republic against the Nacionales rebels and was instrumental in organizing a collaboration between the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, which was sponsored by his Catalan government, and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), a revolutionary anti-Stalinist communist party, and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), an anarchist syndicalist trade union.

During the war, Companys attempted to maintain the unity of his political coalition, but after the Soviet Union's consul, Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, threatened that his country would cut off aid to Catalonia, he sacked Andreu Nin from his post as minister of Justice in December 1936.

Exiled to France in 1939 after the Civil War, Companys had passed up various chances to leave France because his son Lluís was seriously ill in a clinic in Paris.

MHP Lluís Companys was arrested by the Gestapo

He was arrested in La Baule-les-Pins near Nantes on August 13, 1940, and detained in La Santé Prison. He was then extradited by Nazi German authorities to the Spanish government in Madrid in early September 1940 and imprisoned in the cellars of the headquarters of the Dirección General de Seguridad, State Security, at the Real Casa de Correos in Puerta del Sol.

He was held there for five weeks, kept in solitary confinement, tortured and beaten, while senior figures of the Francoist State visited his cell, insulted him and threw coins or crusts of bread at him.

In a military trial which lasted less than one hour and lacked legal guarantees, he was accused of military rebellion and sentenced to death.

During the trial Companys was defended by Ramón de Colubi, a young soldier who had fought the war on the side of the rebels. Surprisingly, Colubí defended Companys with courage to the point of receiving threats and risking his own life. Colubí asked Franco to pardon Companys, but was ignored.

As a consequence of his role as defence attorney, Colubí was forced to go into exile. Víctor Gay Zaragoza, a Catalan writer found that Companys and Colubí were relatives.

More information: ARA

All these efforts were useless and Companys was executed at Montjuïc Castle in Barcelona at 6:30 a.m. on October 15, 1940. Refusing to wear a blindfold, he was taken before a firing squad of Civil Guards barefoot and, as they fired, he shouted Per Catalunya!, For Catalonia!.

He is buried at the Montjuïc Cemetery, near the castle. The cause of death was given as traumatic internal haemorrhage.

The main stadium used for the 1992 Summer Olympics, located on Montjuïc, is officially named in his memory. 

In 1998 a monument to Companys was installed near Arc de Triomf, on Passeig de Lluís Companys in Barcelona. A friend of Companys, Conxita Julià, is portrayed next to Companys' image in the monument. Several streets and squares in many cities and villages of Catalonia are named Lluís Companys after him.

His personal archive is located in the Pavelló de la República CRAI Library -University of Barcelona. It consists of correspondence about him, as well as discourses and declarations between 1936-1938.

More information: Pinterest

My smallness could not hope for a more dignified death.

MHP Lluís Companys i Jover