On a trip to Israel, during the long security checks at Ben Gurion Airport, Joan B. Culla showed the police who were interrogating her a photocopy of the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth’s review of her book Israel, el somni i la tragèdia. From Zionism to the Palestine conflict. The practice, which served to stop them from bothering him anymore, prefigures a character. Also philo-Israelism, which has accompanied the historian since reading Exodus by Leon Uris in 1966 awakened his sympathy for the Jewish people, in which he made influential contacts. Culla died this Wednesday at the age of 71.
Born in 1952 in Poblenou, the son of a manager at Hispano Olivetti, Culla was a voracious reader as a teenager, fascinated by cinema, with an innate fondness for copying and making files from newspaper texts, writing down his life and saving any paper. . In 1976 he presented El catalanisme d’esquerra (1928-1936). He from the “L’ Opinió” group to the Partit Nacionalista Republicà d’ Esquerra, which earned him the extraordinary prize for a degree in Philosophy and Letters at the University of Barcelona (UB).
The following year, a cacicada in the distribution of places – a perennial university classic – separated him from the UB and through contacts he enrolled in the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). A determining fact in his career that would lead him to be a full professor. In 43 years, almost all the journalists who emerged from the UAB had him as a professor of History of Catalonia. A factor that, together with his faculty knowledge, made it easier for him to enter and stay in various media for decades.
Contributor to the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, Serra d’Or and L’Avenç, in 1985 he presented the doctoral thesis directed by Josep Termes, El republicanisme a Catalunya (1901-1923), in which he refuted the topic of the immigrant origin of the Catalan Lerrouxistas . Compared to other long careers, however, Culla has not left a large number of academic articles, nor of great impact. It was not his objective.
Unlike many colleagues without public notoriety, what the professor has pursued from the podium or behind the scenes is influence. Culla discovered the power of television by advising the Memòria Popular program on TVE (1981-1983), and presenting, every week for two decades, historical documentaries acquired by Televisió de Catalunya in the 20th Century (1991-2013). With the help of Josep Cuní and former student Antoni Bassas, he became a talk show host, especially on Televisió de Catalunya and Catalunya Ràdio.
At the end of the eighties, while teaching history to future Mossos d’Esquadra and local police officers at the Catalan Police School, he collaborated regularly with the Avui for a decade. And, especially, since 1992, in El País (Catalunya), where he assumed the role of defender of Catalan nationalism, in a few years in which he promoted the ACTA Foundation with Vicenç Villatoro and Pilar Rahola with the same objective. His sarcastic articles, often hurtful, regularly targeted the PSC, the PP and the ecosocialists. Albert Boadella baptized him “J. B. Pulla” in Ubú President.
Culla did not hide that he was an opinionated party. He admired that foreign correspondents described him as a “leading Catalan historian” and understood that when he explained the Catalan case to them he “did pedagogy.” His specialization in stasiology, with a proverbial archive on the trajectory of Catalan political parties, allowed him in his articles to point out the contradictions of political representatives.
He criticized Josep Piqué; However, his curiosity made her agree to cover his nationalist quota as a member of his board in the Cercle d’Economia. He attacked Juan Carlos I, but at the reception at the Zarzuela he declared that his monarchism was “relative”, because he had taught Infanta Cristina. He attacked Josep Antoni Duran Lleida, but in 2011 he considered joining the list in Las Cortes in the places of Unió Democràtica, in the CiU candidacy, until ruling it out for money.
Culla missed the authorized biographies of the two presidents he had dealt with the most. To Josep Tarradellas because when he had already selected material to start, someone told him that the historian was a pushover and the project was stopped. From now on, the professor was left with undisguised acrimony toward the president. And to Jordi Pujol who, despite reaching great complicity and often inviting him to the Casa dels Canonges, he feared a biography that was too rigorous after Culla’s obstacles to publishing El pal de paller. Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (1974-2000).
Like the majority of Catalan supporters, the historian embraced the independence movement in the 1910s. After 1-O he blew up bridges and got fired from El País. After thirty years of writing, a multitude of readers regretted him and the team headed by Lluís Bassets, who had always defended him, was hurt. Immediately, he continued in the newspaper Ara with a more heartbreaking and liberated article, from a comfortable position that has earned him, more than readers, true fans.
His sharp and accurate pen has served as a reference, but he has left no imitators of stature. The professor will last in the memory of generations of journalists and in those generations who overcome the quarantine, grown up sheltered by the Corporation’s media. Academically, the now classic studies of the L’Opinió group and Lerrouxism will remain, while the volumes of Israel, La dreta espanyola a Catalunya (1975-2008) and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (1931-2012), a political history will serve as gateway to their respective areas. It is surprising that after thirty years of service, Joan B. Culla Clarà died without a friendly government having awarded him the Cross of Sant Jordi.
