El Centre Català. La primera associació política catalanista (1882-1894)

2002. Pròleg d'Agustí Colomines i Companys, 297 pp.

As the reader of this book can see, the political thought of Valentí Almirall (1841 – 1904) is part of the tradition of the first political Catalanism, of which was built from a modern liberalism after the failure of the revolutionary and democratic experience of the years 1864 – 1874. A Catalanism – then following particularism – away, already, from the federalism of Pi i Margall, as well as from the Catalan-Catholic conservatism that represented very well the canon Jaume Collell and the people of ‘The Voice of Montserrat’. This Catalanism, therefore, is a part of the fundamentals of that left-winged Catalanism that was consolidated, conditioned by the regime of the restoration (1874 -1923) until becoming hegemonic during the Second Republic. Almirall was, thus, the first to defend – and this is not a lesser merit – the politicization of the literary Catalanism of the Renaissance, its conversion into political movement, as the only way to achieve the self-government of Catalonia. And yet, nowadays Almirall is practically a stranger. The centenary of his birth was not remembered – for obvious reasons – as it tended to have been, and when it took place the 150th anniversary, the year 1991, after more than a decade of the approval of the new Statue of autonomy, it cannot be said that he was honoured.