Anti-Franco activist Jordi Carbonell dies aged 92
He was the president of the left-wing pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana (ERC) between 1996 and 2004 and a renowned Catalan philologist. Carbonell was responsible for the first four volumes of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (the ‘Big Catalan Encyclopaedia’), that he compiled between 1965 and 1971. During the Franco dictatorship he was incarcerated twice because of his anti-fascist and pro-Catalan language activism. One of the more famous sentences of the pro-independence movement is his: “Que la prudència no ens faci traïdors”, (“Don’t let caution turn us into traitors”, in English). He pronounced it on the 11th of September 1976, during the first Catalan National Day demonstration after the death of the dictator.