Barcelona : Tribute to the Catalan President Lluís Companys (1934-1940)
On September 29th 2008, the Generalitat of Catalonia presented, in the Palace auditorium, a request that will be officially expressed to the central government in Madrid, so that the latter announces the nullity of the judgment that sentenced the former Catalan president as well as his relatives to death. It would put an end, at the same time, to the 1977 amnesty law, based on forgetting the history of franquism and those «shameful» political and juridical impunities.
In an official ceremony, the vice-president of the Catalan government (Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira) confirmed that after these 15 days the friends and relatives of Lluís Companys would send to J.L. Zapatero's government a request to annull the judgments that caused the extradition and execution of the former Catalan president.
The ceremony has also been attended by the consuls of Germany and of the French state, Mrs Christine Gläser and Mr Pascal Brice. The former reminded to the audience that the German chancellor Helmut Kohl had acknowledged his country's responsibility in the expulsion and execution of Lluís Companys in 1984, and had asked the Catalan president, J. Pujol, forgiveness. The French consul then retraced the exiled Lluís Companys' itinerary through Brittany (residence watched by the French police in La Baule) and through France (nazi prison in Paris), ending by the remittance of Companys to the Franquist military junta in Irun, in the conquered Basque Country, on August 23rd 1940. The French consul concluded, with conviction, by saying that «every freedom fighter is somehow French...» thus giving to the ceremony a very classical taste of «French touch».
The event was co-organised by the Generalitat and by the Dignity Commission, as well as many politicians, such as the former presidents of the Cataland government, historians and artists. Poetry was read, and P. Neruda was quoted. An exhibition on Lluís Companys' (who died aged 65) political career will set up in Blanes (north of Barcelona) and could travel to other places.
It is precisely during the inauguration of this exhibition that Mr Joan Ridao (general secretary of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) will demand publicly the annulation of the «judgment» for Companys and his comrades. 72 years after the start of the civil war by a military junta against the elected government «... the intensity of the memorial vertigo never stops increasing at the measure of the prescripted silences, the one by the dictatorship, the other by the democratic transition's political consensus» (quote by Llibert Tarrago, in his book : The Catalan puzzle...) in today's Catalonia.
Lluís Companys' (1882-1940).
For the Breton Party's External Federation, Bernard Guyader who represented the Party at the ceremony.
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