Pompeo Fabra, Antoni Rovira y Virgili, Pau Casals, Luis Companis, Neus Catala, Alexandre Galli, Frederica Montseny, Natividad Yarza, Joan Tarrago… There are many Catalans who represent Republican exile.
Personalities committed to the country, who have made a notable contribution in the political sphere, in the anti-fascist resistance, or in fields such as the arts, journalism, education, or engineering.
Despite this list of great Catalan figures, the state's General Directorate of Heritage chose the writer from Seville, Antonio Machado, as the figure most representative of exile: “If there was a name that could put a face to what it would mean to be exiled by tens of thousands of republicans at the end of the war… Spanish nationality is the exile of the poet Antonio Machado.”
Machado died in 1939 in Cotilor (Roselló), the city where he was buried. His grave is the meeting place every April 14 for Spanish Republicans.
On June 16, 1937, Antonio Machado, under the pseudonym Juan de Mirena, wrote the following in the magazine “Hora de España”: “Always be suspicious of those who say they are Galician, Catalan or Basque… and not Spanish. They tend to be incomplete and inadequate Spaniards, and nothing great can be expected from them.“.
Image of the tweet from the official account of the General Directorate of Heritage. Writer: @patrimonigencat
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