page_title: Joan Bardina Castarà
section_title: Carlist
hierarchical_section_title: Joan Bardina Castarà / Carlist
caption_attribution_description: Español: Cuartel de Badalona durante la intentona carlista de octubre de 1900
context_page_description: Joan Doménec Bardina Castarà was a Spanish-Chilean theorist of education, acknowledged for his innovative approach to pedagogy and for his contribution to renewal of the Catalan schooling system. In Chile he is known also as a scholar in law; in Spain, and especially in Catalonia, he is recognized as a member of the Catalanist movement. Active in Carlism during his youth, he is considered a typical case of a transitional political identity, moving from Carlism to peripheral nationalism. Increasingly concerned with social issues, by the end of his life he sympathized with Francoism and Nazism; he also focused more on his extended family and became increasingly religious. His manuals, published anonymously and related mostly to health, hygiene and cuisine, were fairly popular in Spain in the 1920s and 1930s.
context_section_description: Bardina did not demonstrate political sympathies until the mid-1890s; influenced by the spirit of fellow seminarians, he neared Carlism. In 1895 he published first poems in the Carlist press, signed with a histrionic pen-name "Valcarlos", and kept contributing to various Traditionalist titles; his pieces featured belligerent tone and scarce maturity. In 1897 he co-founded the Barcelona section of Joventut Escolar Tradicionalista, an activity which triggered correspondence between the minister of justice and ecclesiastic authorities. The same year Bardina joined a newly launched Carlist satirical weekly in Catalan, Lo Mestre Titas, and quickly emerged as one of its key contributors.
  Lo Mestre Titas remained on the margins of the Catalan Carlism, ignored by the regional party mouthpiece, El Correo Catalan; its heterodoxy consisted of unusually militant tone, regionalism exceeding the standard party levels, and antipathy towards the regional leader Llauder. Bardina's contributions fell into 3 fields: lambasting Liberal governments, discussing political stand of the Church, and promoting Catalanism; he wrote poetry and essays. His advances against pro-Alfonsist course of the Church cost Bardina a conflict with seminarian superiors and led to leaving the seminary. His zealous, Carlism-formatted Catalanism cost Bardina a conflict with periodicals close to Unió Catalanista; it also cost Bardina a conflict with Llauder, who considered his Catalanist-Carlist propaganda beyond the party orthodoxy.
  The climax of Bardina's Carlist engagement fell on 1899-1900, when he published an unorthodox biography of Aparisi Guijarro, first volume of an intended series on history of Carlism and two treaties discussing his vision of Carlist Catalonia; they raised many eyebrows, and in 1900 Llauder explicitly prohibited Bardina propagating his Catalanist-Carlist outlook. Militant tone of Lo Mestre Titas brought administrative fines, which in April 1900 led to disappearance of the title. Bardina was trialed for instigating to rebellion and fined; indeed by scholars he is considered representative of a “catastrophist” approach.
  It is not clear whether Bardina took part in Carlist military gear-up to overthrow the regime in 1899-1900; his publications, including a self-devised infantry tactical rulebook, were clearly pointing in this direction. The conspiracy boiled down to few isolated attempts in October 1900, and most of those detained afterwards were Bardina's friends. He was profoundly disappointed by ambiguous stand of the claimant, whose official condemnation of those involved alienated Bardina further on. His Carlism started to assume increasingly offshoot tone. In 1901-1902 he was engaged in El Cañón, an even more heterodox successor of Lo Mestre Titas, and niche Catholic periodicals La Barretina and Luz Católica. He might have been involved in conspiracy to replace Don Carlos with his son, Don Jaime. In a symbolic gesture, he shortened his pen-name from “Valcarlos” to “Val”. Bardina's anti-regime stand cost him another detention; he was spared sanctions thanks to private links. In 1903 he openly lambasted Carlist executive for ineptitude. Ridiculed by the party press as ex-Carlista, Bardina declared having been a Traditionalist but never a Carlist, and in his later booklet openly challenged the “Carlo-traitors”.
caption: La Octubrada
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