Albert Balcells

Las actitudes de los intelectuales en la España de los años sesenta

A partir de l’analisi de les exposicions i conferencies organitzades pel Col·legi Oficial d’Arquitectes de Catalunya i Balears es vol reconstruir la implicacio cultural i civica d’una institucio professional. Al llarg dels anys seixanta. aquest col·lectiu va mostrar una conscienciacio progressiva que es va plasmar clarament en la Comissio de Cultura, que connectava la professio amb les inquietuds dels sectors mes dinamics de la cultura catalana i que en la decada seguent es traduiria en un compromis public encara mes explicit.

Catalan Historical Review, la nova revista de l’IEC

El text analitza l’apropiacio del garibaldinisme, amb els seus valors de tradicio i de mite, pel feixisme que se’n proclama hereu i continuador. En aquest sentit, es subratlla com el feixisme incorpora en la seva ideologia i en la seva praxi tot element de la historia i de la identitat nacional, ara actualitzats en el culte al feix. El feixisme presumi de personificar el mite garibaldi i intenta ajustar-ho a la moderna politica de massa, aconseguint tambe que alguns descendents de Garibaldi s’apropessin al regim. El text posa en relleu que la incorporacio del garibaldinisme al feixisme fou possible tambe per la seva mateixa naturalesa de sentiment passional i que aquesta mateixa interpretacio fou compartida tambe pels sectors antifeixistes.

Civisme i higiene. El programa d'educació ciutadana de la Mancomunitat de Catalunya, 1914-1923

La biografia esdeve un element imprescindible per entendre un temps, una societat i una manera de ser. La de Joan Mane i Flaquer ens ajuda a cercar aquests elements en la relacio i el lloc que va ocupar Catalunya dins de l’Espanya liberal. Pero tambe es la relectura dels mitjans de comunicacio com a element de difusio ideologica de primer ordre i de com es va comencar a constituir en una empresa de caracter capitalista, en un moment en que el debat politic comenca a sortir dels reduits cenacles d’una petita minoria de persones.

La Lliga i la dreta

The author revises the research into the Catalan cultural and political reviews from the eighties. He also does here a general criticism and he establishes a series of approaches and objectives that might be adopted by the researchers in order to avoid future needs for as well as to acquire a comparable historiography to.

From the 1951 Strike to the Catalanist Challenge of 1960

The spontaneous popular movement which began with a boycott of the Barcelona trams and continued with a general strike in March 1951 was the most important and widespread to occur during the first twenty years of the Franco regime. The rise in fares on the Barcelona trams, while those in Madrid remained unchanged, was perceived of as a flagrant piece of injustice and sparked off so much protest that the authorities withdrew the increase. The ensuing twenty-four hour general strike was mercilessly crushed, but it brought to light the unease of the working classes after over ten years of electricity restrictions, high prices, housing shortages, rationing of basic foods, and black-market racketeering. It also showed that workers opposed to the regime had infiltrated the base of the ‘vertical union’ and all but taken over the Falangist movement since the call for a general strike had come from an assembly of 2000 official union delegates. The experience of the 1951 tram boycott, which had forced a return to the previous fare scale and caused the fall of a mayor and a civil governor, lived on in the memory of the Catalans. This explains the attempt to stage a new boycott in January 1957, though the second one did not succeed in making the authorities give in.

The Generalitat under the Second Republic and the Statute of Self-government

The proclamation of the Catalan Republic on 14 April 1931 was a victory for the strategy of the Catalan nationalist Left which, for a quarter of a century, had been claiming that Catalan self-government was impossible without a break with the former regime and the introduction of democracy. Macia’s declaration of Catalan sovereignty was not an attempt to infringe the 1930 San Sebastian Pact but to speed up progress towards the federalization of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula.

The First Catalanist Political Organizations

The founder of political Catalanism and the first theoretician of Catalan aspirations to self-government was Valenti Almirall. In 1879, while still a militant Federal Republican, he founded the first Catalan-language newspaper, El Diari Catala, and in 1880 he convened the first Catalanist Congress in an attempt to create an inter-class front in which Republicans and Monarchists, Catholics and free-thinkers could collaborate. Almirall failed at this congress to reach an agreement with the group linked to the magazine La Renaixensa, which styled itself ‘apolitical’ and turned its weekly paper into a daily to compete with his own. The Congress did however decide to appoint a commission to defend the survival of Catalan civil law against the threat of the Spanish Codigo Civil, which was being drawn up on the basis of Castilian law. It also decided to create an academy to unify the spelling and regulate the grammar of the Catalan language. Finally, plans were laid for the establishment of a centre to coordinate the many Catalanist organizations that were gradually springing up in various localities. The fact that the Catalanist Congress was attended by the first rambling clubs is indicative of the important role played by cultural associations with patriotic leanings in the early rise and development of Catalanism.

The Development of Catalan Self-government from 1980 to 1990

The first Catalan elections, held in March 1980, brought about a change in the internal correlation of political forces. Convergencia i Unio1 became the leading minority party, with 27.7 per cent of the votes, followed by the PSC—PSOE with 22.3 per cent, PSUC with 18.7 per cent, UCD with 10.5 per cent and ERC with 8.9 per cent. CiU had won over part of the former UCD and ERC electorate. It had also taken a number of votes from the PSC, and the Catalan Socialists suffered too from the abstention of certain voters who backed the PSOE in general elections. One negative factor for the new self-governing Catalonia was the fact that voter turn-out in regional elections was lower than in Spanish general elections.

Catalan Federalism and the Failure of the First Republic

The experience of the Sexenio Democratico (’six Years of Democracy’), which began with the dethronement of Isabel II in September 1868, had far-reaching effects on the subsequent rise of political Catalanism. In the first elections with universal male suffrage held in 1869, a new political force, Federal Republicanism, won a majority in Catalonia, though it immediately became apparent that it commanded only a minority in the rest of Spain. This was the first sign of the appearance of the distinct personality of Catalonia. Although Federal Republicanism was an organization that encompassed the whole of Spain, it presented an alternative project for a Spanish State into which Catalonia could fit without either being disloyal to Spain or giving up its distinctive features or aspirations to self-government. The rationalist, universalist formulas of Federal Republicanism served to conceal a strong undercurrent of Catalan particularism, though the regionalism of the early leader of Catalan Federal Republicanism, Pi Margall, was Spanish and not Catalanist.

The Catalan Opposition to the Franco Régime between 1962 and 1975

The development of Catalan society in the 1960s and 1970s posed a serious challenge to the Franco regime. Its aim was to ensure not merely the survival of Catalan culture but its reconstruction and modernization. The opposition was successful, furthermore, in establishing areas in which collaboration between parties was possible and in creating the first large-scale organizations within the new labour and student movements. Apart from isolated events, such as the 1950 general strike, a few local or sectorial disputes, and the student meeting held in the university assembly hall in 1957, there had been no movement of sufficient scope or duration to allow the transition from clandestinity to illegality to occur. The process began in the mid-1960s and gathered strength during the declining years of the dictator and his regime.