Ventura Gassol, Rafael Ramis, Martí Vilanova, Joan Ysern, Pere Garrós, Manuel Marsà. The left-wing republican Le Quotidien details the names of some of the Catalan separatists, members of Francesc Macià’s Estat Català, arrested for whistling Miguel Primo de Rivera. Paris, July 14, 1926. France has invited its new friend, the Spanish dictator, and Sultan Mulay Yusuf to celebrate their national day.
The war in Morocco has changed the Spanish-French relationship. And on the rebound, the situation of the Republican exiles opposed to Primo de Rivera, among whom are the Catalan separatists. From now on they will no longer move with the same ease with which they have done under the successive governments of the Cartel des Gauches, the alliance of the French left.
In the spring of 1925, Abdelkrim had been wrong. France had panicked after the attack on their army and the proximity of the Riffians to Fez. Although the pseudo-fascist dictator was not a saint of his devotion, the French Republic had allied with Spain to maintain, each one, their protectorate. Primo de Rivera had scored an important victory with the landing of Al Hoceima. It was the beginning of the end. In March 1926, Marshal Philippe Pétain had entered into a cooperation agreement with him. Two months later, Abdelkrim surrendered.
France and Spain are celebrating. At the end of June, however, the Sûreté Générale aborted the attempt by anarchists Buenaventura Durruti, Francisco Ascaso and Joan Garcia Oliver to assassinate Alfonso XIII on a visit to Paris and arrested the first two. The French Ministry of the Interior mobilizes its agents to now prevent a similar action against Primo de Rivera. The Republic wants no surprises.
On July 14, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Édouard Herriot; the President of the Council of Ministers, Aristide Briand; Marshal Pétain; Sultan Yusuf; the dictator Primo de Rivera; the ambassador of Spain in France José Quiñones de León, and the rest of the authorities to the Arc de Triomphe to pay homage to the unknown soldier.
The French communists, very critical of their country’s colonial policy, promote a loud whistle. The zeal of the authorities means that most of the detainees are detained for that reason alone, although some also carry weapons. When the police commissioner sees dozens of whistles on his table, he justifies himself: “They have been stolen in the bazaars!” The communist mouthpiece, L’Humanité, picks it up indignantly. The result: more than 150 detainees, some held for several days. That there are Catalans in the middle of the communist whistle is not strange either. It has not been half a year yet since Macià has returned from Moscow from asking the Soviets for money to assemble his army.
The detained Catalans were released thanks to the intervention of Herriot and the Perpignan deputy for the Pyrenees-Orientales and undersecretary of state, Pierre Joseph Rameil. According to the correspondence kept in the Macià collection of the National Archive of Catalonia, on the 19th, Josep Esparch, one of the key names of Estat Català, asked his leader to convey the sympathy of the men who are with him in Perpignan “to the comrades from Paris who suffered the brutalities of the French police and may God willing that soon we can take revenge for our insults and suffering with the Spanish executioners.” Also, already released, Gassol calls from Bois-Colombes, the organization’s headquarters, Josep Rovira, Macià’s lieutenant in Toulouse, who will explain “the odyssey that happened to all of us detainees.”
Rovira, at the same time, tells Jaume Balius, an EC collaborator in Paris, that the French newspapers talk about the communists’ whistle blowing on Primo. “Ours see, according to the arrests, that they have not stopped taking part either. It is unfortunate that they are going to get caught for something so innocent”. The French police, however, do not consider it so.
Apart from those arrested on the 14th, two days earlier, on the night of July 12, when Primo de Rivera arrived at the Orsay station, the police made the first arrests. Among others, that of a platoon leader from Estat Català, Ramon Martí Farreras, for whistling at the dictator and calling him a “murderer”. The man from Manresa, barely 24 years old, had lived in Bois-Colombes for three months. He had deserted from the army so as not to go to the war in Morocco. He was a contributor to the newspaper El Pla de Bages, owned by the family of his cousin Francesc Farreras Duran, future president of the Parliament of Catalonia in exile.
As Victor Robert Vuillermoz, also an Italian turner, was arrested with him, the police expelled him to Belgium on the 14th, according to the file of the French National Archives to which La Vanguardia has accessed. In Brussels, Martí Farreras confided to Marguerite, the servant of the lodging where he stayed and with whom he had a brief relationship, that “he had cooperated in the organization of an attack against Primo de Rivera.”
In August, she informed the Belgian police. In turn, the General Directorate of Public Security transferred him to the Spanish embassy in Belgium, with a photograph of him included. And this reported in Madrid, according to the file of the Belgian National Archives to which this newspaper has accessed.
Macià, as he had already demonstrated with the Garraf plot (and as our readers read in Objective: kill Alfonso XIII on May 13), was against personal attacks. Did Martí Farreras want to act outside of Estat Català, linked to a name like Vuillermoz, or did he just want to impress Marguerite? If so, his lie generated a good diplomatic exchange.
As it was, from Brussels he wrote to Macià repentant. “I have read in the Belgian newspapers that there are many foreigners detained in Paris, because of the demonstrations against Primo de Rivera. I sincerely hope that they have not bothered you, nor your immediate collaborators, Ventura Gassol, Josep Bordas de la Cuesta, Josep Carner-Ribalta”. And he added: “This expulsion of mine does not hurt me because of my personal things, but it does make me feel bad because of the delay that the incorporation of those of us who will be twice exiled will mean for the Catalan Army.”
At the end of August, Martí Farreras left Belgium, went to Figueres and then returned to Paris. In the meantime he wrote to Marguerite to tell her that she had a “sweet memory” of the days they had spent together and that if she got any mail he would send it to Bois-Colombes. The girl gave the love letter, including the EC stamp, back to the police. First it was the security of the country, then romanticism. Or perhaps she was hurt because the man from Manresa had left?
At the beginning of November 1926, Martí was one of the hundred Catalans arrested in the failed Prats de Molló plot. The closer relations between the French Republic and Primorriverista Spain meant that Macià could no longer delay his attempt to invade Catalonia to promote an insurrection and proclaim the Catalan Republic. The unexpected arrest of a group of his men on July 14 nearly prevented him from even starting the operation.
