Historical pieces selected by Josep Maria CasasosBy Josep Maria de Sagarra (Barcelona, 1894-1961) A Mirador(28-XII-1933). Yesterday marked ninety years since the death of Francesc Macia (Villanova y la Geltrú, 1859 – Barcelona, 1933), the first president of the state restored in 1931. In this article, Sagarra evokes the social imagination of the decades 1920-1930 combined with the components of a mythology inspired by the character The same legendary features of Macia that penetrated the Catalan Moscratic mentality in the years of the Republic. The fact that his death occurred on Christmas Day highlighted that popular idealism mechanical.
In the year 1902, in the early days of my conscious life, I twice experienced the impression that a momentous death had taken place in my country. The first was at the burial of Dr. Robert, and the second was at the burial of Monsignor Cento. Dr. Robert then represented the first forces of organized Catalanism. […] In the face of Pastor Sento's death, there was a massive popular uproar, with all the atmosphere of a national event […] Later, I remember that November morning in 1911 when we accompanied the body of Joan Maragall, one of the most important figures in Catalonia, to the Sant Gervasi Cemetery. […] Then I remember the character of another great patriot, embedded in the fixed towers of our history. In the summer of 1917, we followed the pomp-filled, black-spectacled float carrying the remains of Enrique Prat de la Riba down the Rambla. […] Then I remember, in the shameful moments of dictatorship, the satisfied weeping and emotion of the entire city of Barcelona in front of Guimira's body. […] But of all these great men, the builders of our history, fate has determined none with such power to produce such complete popular emotion as President Macia, who on Christmas morning was extinguished forever. […] There is no man in our entire history who represents, without going beyond the limits of time, and without resorting to any kind of magic, all feelings that have nothing to do with politics, and all poetry, far from politics. Who transforms fleeting emotion into lasting beauty. […] Leaving aside the criticisms that political writers might make of Masia's personality and performance, we will only look at these three years of the Republic only for their poetry and heroism, which in the end and throughout the centuries may be the only thing of positive value that remains of human actions, produced… The figure of President Macia in Catalonia is an extraordinary popular dream. This dream, which we lived in Catalonia for three years, was lived by Macia himself who created it, and he lived it with the highest prestige and the highest authority that any Catalan in our country has. Recently, part political man and part political party in Masia, and that it was not exactly what was so charming and incommensurable in the character of the President, that prompted part of public opinion to react in an aggressive manner. Formed against the dream, in the destructive form of mythology; But death, this transformation and summation of everything, gave a new force, so amazing, so pathetic, to the dream of the knight Masia. Above the politics of the party, above the personal politics of the man, there appears this great knightly personality, who belongs to the climate of sentiment and belongs to the climate of poetry, and it is this very strong poetic value of Francisque Mascia that moves me in the unprecedented apotheosis which Catalonia has given him these days.
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