page_title: Catalan nationalism
section_title: Catalanism in the 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Catalan nationalism / The development of modern Catalanism / Catalanism in the 20th century
caption_attribution_description: Español: Luis Companys, Gobernador civil de Barcelona, en el artículo Cómo se proclamó la República en Barcelona
context_page_description: Catalan nationalism is the ideology asserting that the Catalans are a nation.
  Intellectually, Catalan nationalism can be said to have commenced as a political philosophy in the unsuccessful attempts to establish a federal state in Spain in the context of the First Republic. Valentí Almirall i Llozer and other intellectuals that participated in this process set up a new political ideology in the 19th century, to restore self-government, as well as to obtain recognition for the Catalan language. These demands were summarized in the so-called Bases de Manresa in 1892.
  It met very little support at first. But after the Spanish–American War in which the United States invaded and annexed the last of the Spanish colonies, these early stages of Catalanism grew in support, mostly because of the weakened Spanish international position after the war and the loss of the two main destinations for Catalan exports.
context_section_description: During the first part of the 20th century, the main nationalist party was the conservative Lliga Regionalista, headed by Francesc Cambó. For the nationalists, the main achievement in this period was the Commonwealth of Catalonia, a grouping of the four Catalan provinces with limited administrative power. The Commonwealth developed an important infrastructure (like roads and phones) and promoted the culture (professional education, libraries, regulation of Catalan language, study of sciences) in order to modernize Catalonia. The failure in being granted an Estatute of autonomy in 1919 within the Restoration regime, led to radicalisation of the moderate nationalist parties in Catalonia, leading in turn to the creation of Acció Catalana (Catalan Action) and also Estat Català (Catalan State), drifting apart from the Lliga. Among the leaders of Acció Catalana founded in 1922 and chiefly supportive of liberal-democratic catalanism and a catalanisation process were Jaume Bofill, Antoni Rovira i Virgili and Lluís Nicolau d'Olwer. It also featured an internal elitist faction, moved by the thinking of Charles Maurras and Action française of which Josep Vicenç Foix and Josep Carbonell were representatives, while Jaume Bofill was ambivalent to the extreme right French thinker. Estat Català, somewhat more attached to the idea of downright independence, was founded right after the creation of Acció Catalana by Francesc Macià.
  The Mancomunitat of Catalonia was dissolved during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera in 1925. The anti-Catalan measures taken by dictator Primo de Rivera led to further disappointment among Catalan conservatives, who initially trusted in him because of an earlier support of regionalism prior to his pronunciamiento in September 1923, and also further exacerbation of insurrectionary nationalists. In November 1926 Macià helmed an attempt of military invasion of Catalonia from France which would purposely lead to a civil uprising and the proclamation of the Catalan Republic; he was not able even to get past through the border.
  In 1931, the left-wing Catalan nationalist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia, ERC) party, born as a result of the fusion of Catalan Republican Party and Estat Català, won the elections in Catalonia, advocating a Catalan Republic federated with Spain the same day of the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. Under pressure from the new Spanish government, the leader of ERC, Francesc Macià, accepted an autonomous Catalan government instead, which recovered the historical name of Generalitat de Catalunya.
  The Catalan Government broke with the Republican legality in the events of October 1934, when Lluís Companys, under the influence of the JEREC, rebelled against the Spanish government.
  A dramatically short period of restoration of democratic and cultural normality was interrupted at its outset by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The autonomous government, which was loyal to the Republic during the 1936–1939 war period, was abolished in 1939, after the victory of the Francoist troops. During the last stages of the war, when the Republican side was on the verge of defeat, Catalan president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, rhetorically declared Catalan independence, even though it never materialized due to objections within Catalonia and, eventually, by the defeat of the Second Spanish Republic.
  Right after the war, Companys, along with thousands of Spanish Republicans, sought cover in France exiled but because of the, by that time, mutual sympathy between Franco's government and Nazi Germany, he was captured after the Fall of France in 1940 and handed to Spanish authorities, who tortured him and which sentenced him to death for 'military rebellion'. He was executed at Montjuïc 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 and, as they fired, he cried 'Per Catalunya!'.
  Several political or cultural Catalan movements operated underground during the dictatorship of Fr
caption: Lluís Companys, the left-wing Catalan nationalist leader executed by Franco's Nationalists in 1940
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