Spain urged to pay tribute to Catalan president executed by Franco

Paris (ACN).- The Catalan vice-president Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira urged the Spanish Government to do more to pay tribute to executed president Lluís Companys. After being arrested in La Baule, in France by the Nazis secret services, he was sent to Spain and condemned to death by the fascist regime in 1940.

The Catalan vice-president Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira urged the Spanish Government to do more to pay tribute to executed president Lluís Companys. After being arrested in La Baule, in France by the Nazis secret services, he was sent to Spain and condemned to death by the fascist regime in 1940.

In a tribute event in La Baule on the 13th of August 2010, Carod-Rovira said, “Catalan society will not be 100% satisfied until the trial against Companys is declared null and void.”

Similarly, the president of the Dignity Commission, Josep Cruanyes, also criticised the Spanish state for failing to recognise the importance of the executed Catalan president.

The Spanish Government “despises Companys,” said Cruanyes.

Cruanyes argued that the Spanish Government’s inability to declare his trial null and void is another sign of Spain’s “disdain” for Catalonia, especially after the Constitutional Court’s recent ruling, which “denies the existence of Catalonia as a nation.”

Carod-Rovira urged citizens to maintain their historical memories, “because people without memory are easily manipulable.” The vice-president also stated that the Spanish law which seeks to repair the memory of those who suffer the consequences of the Civil War has had a positive impact, but more action is needed.

For example, Carod-Rovira remembered that Companys was “humilliated and tortured” in Madrid in the current headquarters of Madrid’s regional government. He said that the Spanish authorities should “not avoid but rather collaborate” to honour the martyred former president Companys in the locations to which he was taken subsequent to his arrest.

In La Baule, France, Carod-Rovira inaugurated a commemorative plaque to honour Companys. Nothing similar has been ever been done in Madrid.

Around fifty people from Catalonia and France attended the event to pay tribute to Companys in La Baule, the town in which the president found refuge at the end of the Spanish Civil War. During the event, musician Serafín Poulet played music by the renowned cellist Pau Casals.

Catalan President Lluís Companys, was arrested in La Baule on the 13th of August 1940 by the Nazis. Without a fair trial, he was condemned to death on the 14th of October 1940 and on the 15th of October 1940, he was executed by Franco's fascist regime. Companys was the only democratically elected president executed during the bloody European conflicts of the thirties and forties.

Before being shot, and in a gesture that has made history, he declared that his death was for his homeland, shouting, “Per Catalunya!”