Anti-Franco activist Jordi Carbonell dies aged 92

The anti-Franco and Catalan activist Jordi Carbonell died on Monday aged 92. 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 11^th of September 1976, during the first demonstration of the Catalan National Day after the death of the fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Independence was always his political goal. In fact, he was only seven years old when Catalan leader Francesc Macià proclaimed the Catalan Republic in 1931.

After suffering the struggles of the Spanish Civil War and the Fascist Dictatorship and having an active role during the transition to democracy in the seventies, he saw with excitement the recent developments towards independence. Even at his advanced age, in the last few years he took part in several events of the left-wing pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana (ERC), which he presided between 1996 and 2004.

As a renowned philologist, Carbonell was responsible of the first four volumes of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (the ‘Big Catalan Encyclopaedia’), that he did between 1965 and 1971. During the Franco dictatorship he was incarcerated twice because of his anti-fascist and pro-Catalan language activism. He collaborated with the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (Institute of Catalan Studies, IEC), and was one of the founding members of the Societat Catalana d’Estudis Històrics (Catalan Society of Historical Studies). He was awarded with the Creu de Sant Jordi (1984), the Golden Medal of the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Honours Medal of the Barcelona Council.

He refused all offers to take posts in office, although he accepted the proposal to be president of ERC. In the last few years of his life, he participated in a wheelchair in the demonstration of the 10th of July 2012, the meeting that created the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) or the rally in support of the former Catalan President Artur Mas when he was called to court for organising a consultation on independence.