Salvador Illa and his government will draw the closest future of Catalonia in a place full of history. The president of the Generalitat meets his advisors this Friday and Saturday at the Poblet Monastery (Tarragona). The meeting will serve to set the priorities of each department, but it has a strong symbolic charge.
Founded in the 12th century, the bowels of Poblet keep the important documentary collection left by Josep Tarradellas, president in exile, restorer of the Generalitat after the Franco regime and main political reference of Illa. The file is named after the daughter of the former president, Montserrat Tarradellas. At this intersection of politics and religion that has been repeated so many times in contemporary Catalan politics, the new stage opened after the first non-independence government in 14 years also stops in a monastery.
The almost two million pages of documentation preserved in the archive preserve the documentation that Tarradellas collected and produced during his term as Minister of the Interior of the Republican Generalitat and the different functions he held during the Civil War. Also that which he was able to gather after the Republican defeat and that which he generated as president in exile, with the Generalitat already reestablished and in his functions as former president after the victory of Jordi Pujol in 1980. There are 143,000 letters.
After the dispersal of the archives of the Republican period due to exile and Francoist repression, Tarradellas, the man who supported the Generalitat during the decades of the dictatorship, made it clear that as many documents as possible should be preserved.
An austere and honest politician who valued institutionality (traits shared with Illa), Tarradellas, in addition to writing everything down, was convinced that only graphic and written coherence would allow new generations not to repeat the mistakes of the Republican period. Preserving all the documents became almost an obsession.
The former president made the donation of his archives official after leaving office, but the decision was not without controversy. Tarradellas chose Poblet because several counts-kings of the Crown of Aragon are buried there, in what he considered a historical thread of continuity of Catalan institutions. In addition, he had very good relations with the abbot Maur Esteva of the time.
Sectors of the Catalan nationalist right, linked in turn to the Monastery of Montserrat (seat of the clandestine meetings that served to found Convergència), criticized the decision and attributed it to an anti-Monserrat option of the president in exile. Religion and politics, a common mix in Catalonia.
Tarradellas, from ERC but on bad terms with Heribert Barrera and who before returning saw the Catalan left afraid to govern and Jordi Pujol (with whom he got on very badly) with a great thirst for power, did not let himself be defeated by the critics and opted for Poblet.
As his eternal secretary and head of the archives until his retirement, Montserrat Catalán, explained in an interview with La Vanguardia, Tarradellas’ papers arrived in Poblet in boxes of blankets from the French city of Tours, near Saint-Martin-le-Beau, the residence of the former president in exile.
The Catalan 20th century, in Poblet
After the donation by the exiled president, several personalities bequeathed their documents to the monastery, which has become an essential stop for historians and researchers to understand the turbulent Catalan 20th century. In Poblet, everything is preserved, from donations from emblematic republicans such as General Batet to the Falangist documents donated by Miquel Mateu Pla or the microfilmed funds of the PSUC during the civil war, obtained by the journalist Llibert Ferri after the opening of the KGB archives.
More recently, former Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu bequeathed to Poblet his documents on the mediation attempt he carried out during the Catalan sovereignist autumn between the government of Mariano Rajoy and the Generalitat of Carles Puigdemont. Oriol Junqueras also wanted to work as a university researcher at the Poblet monastery during his sentence for the trial before returning to prison, but he was ultimately unable to do so due to the COVID restrictions that the monastery maintained in 2021.
Illa is surely the president who has most proven one of his predecessors right in power. The PSC leader’s admiration for the former president also has a history: Illa’s political mentor was Romà Planas, special delegate of Tarradellas in 1977 after his return and councilor during the provisional Generalitat. The unexpected death of Planas in 1995 led Illa to become mayor of Roca del Vallès (Barcelona).
Almost 20 years later, the “Tarradellism” remains in the former minister. “Tarradells is perseverance, it is perseverance, it is stubbornness. Tarradellas is a pact, it puts public services at the centre of politics, that is what is needed today in Catalonia”, Illa affirmed during the electoral campaign at an event in the former president’s hometown, Cervelló (Barcelona).
The previous government of Father Aragonès also began its mandate with a meeting outside Barcelona. It was at the Culture and Nature Center of Vall d’en Bas (Girona). Salvador Illa also chose to leave the capital to grease the new Consell Executiu (each councilor will present to Poblet the priorities of their department, with the 2025 budgets as the main objective), but he chose a place that breathes history and ‘tarradellismo”.
