POLITICAL LIVES is a series of biographies of remarkable politicians, scholars and activists that helped shape our societies throughout the XX century.

The second issue of the collection is devoted to Lluís Companys the only

democratically elected president to be executed during the Second World War.

He worked as a journalist, labour lawyer, union organiser, town councillor and member of parliament (MP) before becoming the president of Catalonia.

He survived imprisonment in Madrid and Minorca and exile in occupied France, where he was arrested by the German military police, and deported to Franco’s Spain. There he was given a summary court martial

and shot on the grounds of Barcelona’s Montjuïc castle.

Franco was so concerned that Companys’s prestige would turn him into a Catalan national martyr, that he and his regime did their utmost to keep his execution secret for nearly four decades.

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This paper is an initiative of Coppieters Foundation in cooperation with Fundació Josep Irla.

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This paper is financially supported by the European Parliament. The European Parliament is not liable for the content of the conference or the opinions of the speakers.

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