Griffith or de Valera? The Split of Catalan Nationalism in the Face of the Irish Civil War

Abstract

Catalan nationalism had always supported Ireland in its struggle for autonomy or independence against the British Empire. The outbreak of the Irish Civil War, nevertheless, surprised Catalanism. This article discusses the difficulties of the main Catalanist political parties in that period—the Lliga Regionalista, Acció Catalana, and Estat Català—to explain the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Catalanist milieu as well as the difficulties of differentiating dominion and federation and adopting a coherent position according to their own ideology and to Catalan internal political dynamics. Focusing on this study case, the objective of the article is to show the difficulties of stateless national movements to explain their own politics and objectives from external models. And, likewise, how the look toward an external nationalism can stop being useful or even raise unexpected questions within the movement that tries to explain itself by simplifying the contexts of others.

In their struggle to achieve some degree of autonomy or independence, substate nationalist movements often use the example of other nationalist movements’ crusades to present the legitimacy of their own demands. This interest does not stem from the willingness to understand the political and social realities in other countries or other nationalisms (Symmons-Symonolewicz 1965; Hroch 1996; Stearns 1997). Instead, its purpose is twofold.

They use external examples or models to achieve internal awareness in the states where they carry out their struggle. By linking it to that of other nationalist movements—usually with more international repercussions—they seek to gain visibility inside and outside the country (McDonogh 1987; Brighenti 2007). On the other hand, substate nationalisms compare their struggle with those of other nationalist movements to explain their own goals and present the political demands they pursue in a more understandable way (Conversi 1997; Keating 2009; Pinard 2021).

However, a model that may have been useful for decades may no longer be so when the chosen example becomes more complex. This situation can then lead to an unexpected situation. The new context of the outer example may no longer be useful and, therefore, can even be discarded. Or what is more, the greater complexity of the foreign model may complicate its understanding and may lead nationalists looking for international examples to ask new questions about its own status and objectives (Ucelay-Da Cal 1984; Esculies, Ucelay-Da Cal, and Pich 2013).

The influence of foreign models on the peripheral nationalist movements of Spain since the end of the 19th century was notable, although not so decisive as to prevail over the structural conditions of each one of them. There was a succession of conjunctures and specific moments that left a lasting trace. But within the set of foreign influences, the Irish was one of the most intense and long-lasting (Núñez Seixas 1992).

This article seeks to illustrate this problem from a concrete example: the Catalan nationalists’ view toward the Irish nationalist movement during the Irish Civil War (1922–1923). When this episode began, Catalan nationalism—usually termed Catalanism—had followed the autonomist or independentist struggle of Irish nationalists for years. ¹ Since the end of the 19th century, Catalanists paid close attention to the evolution of the politics concerning the Irish Parliamentary Party, Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond, the demand for a Home Rule, the birth of Sinn Féin, the Easter Rising and the War of Independence (Ferrer Pont 2007).

Catalanists had no problem interpreting the demands for Irish self-government while Irish nationalists were facing the British Empire. Nevertheless, this scheme was put upside down in June 1922. It was no longer the British troops who the Irish nationalists fought against; it was among themselves. Catalanists, therefore, saw their simplistic view upset, and each of its factions had to consider whether they were in favor of the government of the Irish Free State or the so-called Republicans. The choice was not easy.

The main Catalanist factions had difficulties explaining what was happening in Ireland and adopting a coherent position, according to the Catalan internal political dynamics. Because it is a case study, this article presents the situation of political Catalanism from its appearance at the end of the 19th century until the 1920s and the interest of Catalan nationalism in the Irish nationalist movement for the same period. To understand all its complexity, the article then goes on to detail the problems faced by the main branches of Catalanism during the period 1922–1923. Although the interest of Catalanists in Ireland continued during the rest of the 1920s and onward, the article does not discuss what happened in these stages. Therefore, it is not the subject of this research. This part is left for later work.

Catalan Nationalism (1891–1920)

By the end of the 19th century, Catalan nationalism emerged. Its main principles rested on demands for the use of Catalan language in the public sphere, the protection of Catalan industries, and the introduction of an autonomous local administration (Figueres 1990; Pich 2003). Crystallization of the Catalanist claims continued further with the emergence of national political groups and parties. The first one, established in 1891, was the Unió Catalanista. The entities’ platform drafted a constitutional project, where Spain and Catalonia should become a dual state, following the example of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Llorens 1992; Termes and Colomines 1992; Pich, Sabater, and Porta 2022).

The Unió refused to take part in electoral competition within the Spanish monarchic regime considering that the elections were rigged. A few years later, younger nationalists disagreed with the course of the Unió and left the organization in 1901. They set up a new political party, the Lliga Regionalista, which continued to promote dual monarchy and chose to participate in elections. As the main Catalan national party from then onward, it soon managed to secure several seats in the Spanish Parliament (Molas 1972; de Riquer 1977; Ehrlich 2004).

Catalan political polarization continued when, in 1906, a group of dissidents left the Lliga and established a new party. The Centre Nacionalista Republicà advocated liberal left-wing policies and the achievement of Catalan autonomy within a Spanish republic. Thus, the Lliga and the Centre became two major political rivals representing the right and the left wings of Catalan nationalism, at the beginning of the 20th century (Izquierdo and Rubí 2009).

In 1904, amidst this political evolution, the Lliga proposed to unify the administrative powers of the four Catalan Provincial Councils into a unique institution. On November 25, 1905, the military garrison in Barcelona attacked the editorial staff of the Lliga’s newspaper, La Veu de Catalunya. The officers burned the editorial office in response to a humorous cartoon that laughed at the inability of the Spanish Army to win wars. Soon the rest of the Spanish garrisons and the king himself, Alfonso XIII, showed solidarity toward the attackers, considering the joke as an anti-Spanish mockery.

The cartoon was the excuse that the Spanish government was looking for to approve the draft of the “Ley para los delitos contra la Patria y el Ejército.” Known as the Jurisdictions Act, it allowed the military to judge whatever they considered as an attack on the unity of the state and on the army. Doing so, the dynastic politicians sought to attract the favor of the military.

In reaction, the Lliga Regionalista, federalists, republican nationalists, independents, the Unió Catalanista and almost all the parties in Catalonia joined in a unitary platform called Solidaritat Catalana. The primary purpose was to prevent the passage of the Jurisdictions Act (Rubí and Espinet 2009). The law passed in 1906 but the Solidaritat ran in the provincial and legislative elections the following year. Thus, one of the main leaders of the Lliga, the lawyer Enric Prat de la Riba, became the director of the movement.

For the election campaign, Prat de la Riba wrote a booklet that became one of the main works of Catalanism, La nacionalitat catalana [The Catalan Nationality] (Prat de la Riba [1906] 2013). The politician defined the concept of nation as natural, with romantic, historicist and conservative roots, regardless of its members’ will. Unlike other nationalisms, however, anyone could be part of it with some ease. The key element clearly was the adoption and practice of the Catalan language.

Prat also theorized about the difficulties of the Spanish state in providing Catalonia with legal and political recognition. The lawyer was aware of the difficulties of Catalans to achieve their own state. Prat de la Riba’s political paradigm was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a dual monarchy, in which Catalans would play the role of Hungarians. In this sense, Prat, who was not a monarchist, did not see the king at the top of the state as a problem if the monarch respected and enforced the laws that each of the member states of the federation were supposed to have.

In 1907, after some deliberations, the Spanish cabinet agreed to form the provincial governments, but it took four years more (1911) for the four Provincial Councils of Catalonia to agree on regional unification. ² Prat de la Riba, who since 1907 was the president of the Provincial Council of Barcelona, brought the Catalan regional unification agreement to Madrid. In December 1913, the Lliga secured the project at the Spanish Parliament (Olivar 1964).

The Mancomunitat de Catalunya was launched in April 1914. The administration was the merger of the Catalan provinces—Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida, and Girona—under a single government, headed by Prat de la Riba, who was also the Barcelona’s Provincial Council president. However, the new structure did not provide full autonomy. There was a Mancomunitat Assembly formed by the Catalan members of the Spanish Cortes. But the Catalan Parliament was missing, and the regional government had no economic autonomy apart from the financial resources of the four provinces. Nevertheless, the new administration was clearly perceived as a serious step toward the introduction of the Home Rule (Balcells, Pujol, and Sabater 1996).

Meanwhile, in 1910 the Centre merged with other republican groups and formed the Unió Federal Nacionalista Republicana. Despite its efforts, the UFNR’s attempts to become an alternative to the Lliga failed because it was always towing the regionalists’ campaign to achieve the Mancomunitat. The Catalanist republican party even agreed with the non-Catalanist Partido Republicano Radical to unseat the Lliga but, still, with no success. This led some of the Unió Federalista members to abandon it. The dissidents, therefore, felt dissatisfied for the UFNR’s turn. This was the case of the journalist and historian Antoni Rovira i Virgili, who went on to collaborate with the Mancomunitat (Izquierdo 2006).

Unexpectedly Enric Prat de la Riba died in August 1917 (Esculies 2017). He was thereafter replaced at the top of the Mancomunitat by another member of the Lliga, the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch (Balcells 2013). In parallel, with the background of the First World War and the influence of the doctrine of self-determination derived from Wilsonism, Catalan separatist organizations proliferated. Separatism horizon was a Republican Catalan state, independent or in an Iberic federation or confederation (Manela 2007; Esculies 2013).

By the end of the war, the alliadophile enthusiasm led Catalanists to demand a Home Rule in late 1918 and early 1919. Predictably, the Spanish government did not grant it. From February 1919 on, a period of convulsion began, especially in Barcelona, with the rise of anarcho-syndicalism led by the Confederació Nacional del Treball. This led the bourgeoisie of the Lliga to align with the Spanish government of the monarchical regime of Alfonso XIII to repress the working class.

On the other hand, the Catalan separatists, who were a very minority and basically white-collar workers, sought for the collaboration of the blue-collar ones. The latter, however, were not interested in an independent Catalonia and saw young clerks and business travelers with too many bourgeois aspirations (Sans Orenga 1975).

At this time the figure of Francesc Macià gained popularity. He was a former lieutenant colonel in the Spanish Army who, disappointed since the 1905 officers’ episode, radicalized his Catalanism. In 1919 Macià was no longer willing to accept a Home Rule and promoted a party, the Federació Democràtica Nacionalista, to demand a state for Catalonia. Macià had been a member of the Spanish Parliament since 1906 thanks to his success in a specific district in the countryside far from Barcelona, where he had a part in his agricultural business. He was popular, but his electoral base was very poor and the Federació Democràtica Nacionalista could not compete with the powerful Lliga (Roig i Rosich 2006).

An Overview of the Catalanist Interest in Ireland

Since its inception, Catalan nationalism had closely followed the evolution of other nationalist movements (Llorens 1989; Núñez Seixas 2010). As in many other parts of the world, the Irish movement was then one of the most attention-grabbing (Wilson 2009; Barr, Finelli, and O’Connor 2014). In 1886 the group linked to the newspaper L’Arch de Sant Martí, which claimed for the civil and political rights of Catalonia, addressed the message “The autonomy of Ireland” to support the Irish demand of the Home Rule (Narcís i Farreras, L’Arch de Sant Martí, July 25, 1886, 700).

After following the demands of Parnell and Redmond and the birth of Sinn Féin, the Catalanists paid attention to the granting—and later postponed— of the Irish Home Rule in the summer of 1914. As well as the emergence of the Irish Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteers (Ferrer Pont 2007, 70–71). Catalanists took advantage of the Home Rule concession in Ireland to criticize the Spanish government for not doing the same. The most nationalist ones accused the Lliga of failing to achieve true autonomy (Roca, Renaixement, January 1, 1914, 3). So they argued with the outstanding leader of the regionalist party at Cortes, Francesc Cambó, who accepted the Catalan nation to keep defining Catalonia as a Spanish region (Rosell, Renaixement, February 12, 1916, 4).

The Easter Rising surprised Catalanists, which already assumed that Ireland would gain its autonomy. The Lliga had declared itself neutral—like the Spanish government—in the context of the First World War. Within the party ranks there were Germanophiles such as Prat de la Riba and Aliadophiles such as Puig i Cadafalch. The Catalanist left, on the other hand, disintegrated into different minor parties and around different publications, favorable to France and the British Empire (Esculies and Martínez 2014).

Easter Rising came at a time when Catalanists praised the British parliament for the democratic resolution of the Irish question. Catalan nationalism saw it as a useless act that could even hinder the implementation of autonomy. Furthermore, the collaboration of the insurgents with the German Empire to obtain weapons was not understood and rejected as Catalanist Left assimilated Spain with Germany and the Central Empires (El Poble Català, May 9, 1916, 1).

Rovira i Virgili considered a good solution to grant the Home Rule All Round for all the territories of the United Kingdom (Rovira i Virgili 1917). The journalist knew well the evolution of nationalist movements. During the 1912–1914 period, he had published three volumes devoted to the issue, which also included a chapter on Ireland (Rovira i Virgili [1912–1914] 2008, 445–481). Also a politician, he assumed the Easter Rising was a “useless bloodshed” and that it was an unsupportive revolt with the rest of the nationalist causes, as it was done in collaboration with the German Empire (Esculies 2014, 163–188). Cambó also criticized the attitude of the Pearse’s insurgents and congratulated Redmond on asking the Irish not to join the revolutionary movement and to work with the British government to implement autonomy (Casassas 1991, 320; de Riquer, 2022).

Just the minoritarian separatists defended the Rising. Among them, the young Daniel Cardona considered that the executed Irish nationalists were martyrs and soon after promoted the Catalan translation of La Chaussée des Géants, Pierre Benoit’s novel inspired on the insurrection (Cardona 1984, 217). Manuel Serra i Moret, leader of Catalanist socialism, also supported the rising (Serra i Moret, Renaixement, June 15, 1916, 1). All in all, the view of the separatist wing of Catalanism was not surprising. One of the most performed plays in the separatist centres at that time was “Jordi Erin,” written in 1906 by Josep Burgas. The play was performed in 1845 at the home of Daniel O’Connell as the personification of Ireland. The text told the story of the demand for autonomy and warned that if it was not granted there would be a revolt. It was, therefore, a prophecy come true (Rovira i Virgili, Renaixement, May 18, 1916, 2).

After the Easter Rising, Catalanists supported Irish nationalism in the War of Independence. Catalonia, and in particular Barcelona, was one of the places in Spain where the hunger strike of the mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, was followed with more interest and resonance in the autumn of 1920 (Rodríguez Calleja 2020). The Catalan lawyer Raimon Negre i Balet published in December “Irlanda, el batlle de Cork i Catalunya” [Ireland, the mayor of Cork and Catalonia], detailing the events organized (Negre 1920).

The Treaty: The Catalanist Dominion Dilemma

On December 7, 1921, La Veu de Catalunya received with satisfaction the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed the day before in London. The director of the Lliga Regionalista newspaper, Joaquim Pellicena, expressed that the agreement meant the recognition of Ireland as a different nation from England and stated the Irish nationalists had shown common sense in accepting it. Moreover, for the journalist, the Anglo-Irish Treaty proved that collective liberty lawsuits could not be resolved by the force of arms. All in all, the member of the Lliga regretted the invariable position of Spanish politicians in contrast with the British cabinet (Pellicena, La Veu de Catalunya, December 7, 1921, 8).

Republican Catalanists also welcomed the treaty enthusiastically. One of his leading intellectuals and politicians, Antoni Rovira i Virgili, recognized he was surprised because he thought that negotiations between the Irish and the British would fail and later, whether the armistice was prolonged or broken, more favorable negotiations would come for Ireland. He also considered that the Sinn Féin had given in two key points of its demands: the territorial integrity of Ireland and the total independence of the Irish state.

Overall, however, Rovira assumed that Irish negotiators had achieved much more than they expected some months ago, the result was superior to the Home Rule, and it could be considered as a personal or monarchical union with military limitations. “Ireland will be called a Free State although it will not be free in the sense of sovereign fullness, but it will be freer than Hungary in the dual Austro-Hungarian regime” (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, December 8, 1921, 7).

Rovira stated that if Irish, he would vote in favor of the treaty. He considered that the breadth of regional freedom was so great that it almost nullified the imposition of allegiance to the monarchy. The journalist also considered that going back to oppression and war would be “crazy.” In his view, Irish was in a better position to achieve absolute independence from the quasi-independence regime that the treaty drew than amid the military struggle against a far superior enemy.

However, Rovira wondered if there was an internal division in Sinn Féin and if the government of the Dáil had been consulted and assented the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Also, anticipating what would happen, the politician pointed out that a split among Irish patriots, for or against the treaty, would be the worst that could happen (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, December 8, 1921, 7). Rovira’s press articles did not go unnoticed by Máirie O’Brien, the Dáil government press liaison in Madrid at that time. ³

On December 9, the lawyer and politician for the Partit Republicà Català, Albert de Quintana i de León, member of the Mancomunitat assembly, asked President Josep Puig i Cadafalch to express the Catalan satisfaction to the Irish representatives. According to the Republican catalanist the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty was an “explicit acknowledgment of the right of nationalities … to be governed by themselves” and, at the same time, an example to be invoked by the Catalans. ⁴

De Quintana had the British constitutional laws in high consideration. Taking advantage of the Anglo-Irish agreement, he also requested the Mancomunitat government to ask, once again, the Spanish government to concede “an integral political, administrative and economic autonomy” to Catalonia following the 1919 Home Rule project. ⁵ The presidency responded that once the Dáil and the British Parliament had accepted the treaty, the first point of his demand would be complied. While Puig i Cadafalch reserved the fulfilment of the second to his own will. ⁶

Meanwhile, Catalan and Irish flags appeared in the balconies of nationalist centers and private homes in Barcelona to celebrate the treaty (La Veu de Catalunya, December 9, 1921, 7). The Madrid press, such as the liberals El Sol and Diario Universal, welcomed it, but in no case did they relate it to the Catalan autonomist demands. The newspapers regretted that Spain had not reached an agreement with Cuba to prevent its independence in 1898. La Veu de Catalunya condemned the parallel in Madrid between Ireland and Cuba instead of Catalonia (La Veu de Catalunya, December 12, 1921, 7).

Meanwhile, Rovira i Virgili, worried about the division of Irish nationalists, predicted that the Dáil would approve the Anglo-Irish Treaty and hoped that the antitreatyites who remained in the minority would abide the decision (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, December 15, 1921, 5). By the end of December 1921, the nervousness of the journalist was evident. He was aware of the debate on the plenipotentiary character of the Irish delegates in London and his previous commitment to get the endorsement of Eamon de Valera and the Dáil government before signing the treaty (for a discussion, see Keny 2021). In this matter, Rovira sided with de Valera and assumed that Arthur Griffith wanted to “stage a coup and put the Dublin cabinet in front of consummated facts”(Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, December 21, 1921, 8).

Highlighting the difficulties in deciphering Irish politics, Esquerra Catalana congratulated de Valera for the signing of the treaty. The tiny leftist and republican party was founded in Barcelona in November to achieve “the widest autonomy of Catalonia within Spain.” Defining themselves as “radical nationalists”, the party members said that although the agreement did not include the maximum number of concessions, it recognized “Irish nationality and the perfect right to sovereignty and the free determination of the collective will” (Esquerra Catalana, La Veu del poble: setmanari d’Esquerra Catalana, January 5, 1922, 3; January 12, 1922, 3).

The Dáil Éireann voted to approve the treaty on January 7, 1922. Two days later, Éamon de Valera stood down as the president and Arthur Griffith succeeded him (Keny 2020, 219–220). The magazine of the Catalan separatist community in Buenos Aires considered “a gesture of patriotic dignity.” The radical wing of Catalanism expected most of the Irish would not accept the treaty “even though most of their counties are in favour of acceptance.” Separatism assumed “de Valera’s criteria will be imposed sooner or later. And it must be so, because the test has been too cruel for the Irish people to come to a transitional solution.” Resurgiment magazine also considered that without absolute independence the treaty was just “a truce to the conflict because Ireland and England cannot coexist” (de Reig, Resurgiment, January 1922, 7).

On February 22, Josep Puig i Cadafalch sent a letter to Arthur Griffith. The Mancomunitat, “the official body representing the unity of the Catalan people” congratulated the Irish people on “the reconquest of Ireland’s national liberty and the constitution of the new Free State.” Puig i Cadafalch also expressed that this fact gave hope to the Catalanists. ⁷ The office of the Irish president responded with a courtesy letter thanking the support, but without expressing any reciprocity for the demands of the Catalan nationalists. ⁸

De Valera considered that the next Dáil elections should be plebiscitary to clarify the treaty approval, as it had passed by a small majority. Rovira i Virgili agreed with the Irish republican proposal. However, the journalist expected the Sinn Féin leader to say that he would abide the result of the referendum in case he lost (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, January 10, 1922, 5). The Republican Catalanists were worried about the growing rebellious attitude of the antitreaty. They also considered that Sinn Féin’s belligerence on the Ulster border could serve as an excuse for British troops to stay on the island. And may this, in turn, make fall the new Griffith government (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, February 10, 1922, 7).

The understanding of left-wing Catalanists regarding de Valera, therefore, had a limit. Furthermore, they opposed the Spanish government’s lack of disposition to reach an agreement for a Catalan Home Rule to the loyalty of the British government with the treaty despite the difficulties of maintaining it (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, March 11, 1922, 7). The Catalanist republicans feared that the crescent violence would endanger the admiration that many nationalist movements felt for the Irish and Ireland would be considered as incapable of developing its own self-government (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, April 18, 1922, 7). In an increasingly critical position, Rovira i Virgili considered that de Valera’s procedures strengthened the British position (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, May 11, 1922, 6).

The Civil War Shifts

At the beginning of June 1922, a group of dissidents left the Lliga Regionalista and founded a new party, Acció Catalana. Some of them were members of the regionalists party’s Youth, whereas others had approached from the republican field. The party also included independent intellectuals. All considered the position of the Lliga to be too conservative and not truly nationalist. Cambó had been minister of finance in the Spanish government between August 1921 and March 1922. The dissidents felt the collaboration had not reported any gain for Catalonia. Acció Catalana was not a pro-independence party, and it did not even define itself as republican, but it tended toward the center left and advocated for a stronger Catalanism than the Lliga. Antoni Rovira i Virgili became one of its vice-presidents (Baras 1984).

During the Conferencia Nacional Catalana, the meeting that led to the foundation of Acció Catalana, Rovira i Virgili defended imitating the tactics of Sinn Féin: get a parliamentary majority, elect nationalist members of the Parliament, do not go to the Spanish Cortes, and form a Catalan Dáil. Francesc Macià was also present at the meeting. The separatist leader proposed to proclaim the Catalan State, to constitute a Catalan Parliament, and to defend it with weaponry. Too radical for the majority, his proposal was not accepted. Macià, therefore, did not adhere to the new political party (Crònica de la Conferència Nacional Catalana, v, June 1922).

After the victory of the pro-treaty Sinn Féin side in the mid-June elections, Rovira i Virgili wished the confrontation between the two opposing factions would be peaceful. Thus, he considered that the limitations of the last constitution draft were less than those of a federal regime and that, in addition, a minority had no right to impose itself by force (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, June 21, 1922, 7). However, that was not the case. After Field Marshal Henry Wilson’s assassination, Republican Catalanists backed Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins when they decided to eradicate the violence and attack the Four Courts (Fewer 2018; McGreevy 2022).

The Battle of Dublin and the beginning of the Irish Civil War caused deep discomfort among the moderate Catalanism represented by the Lliga. The editorial of La Veu de Catalunya stated that the Irish conflict proved that all lawsuits for collective freedom became poisoned, aggravated, and complicated when the solution was postponed. The newspaper added that if the Anglo-Irish Treaty or the Home Rule had been approved five or 10 years before, the situation in Ireland would be different (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, July 1, 1922, 7).

The argument clearly shifted responsibility for the confrontation to the British government for failing to resolve the Irish issue sooner. This expected to discharge the Irish from responsibility and, therefore, sought to leave intact the example followed by the Catalanists. It also intended to throw a dart at the Spanish government for not resolving the Catalan question. All in all, then, according to La Veu Barcelona and Madrid had to draw a lesson “from the danger of civil war among patriots” (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, July 8, 1922, 9).

Meanwhile, Rovira i Virgili continued his critics on de Valera. The rebellion, he said, could not win, but it would cause worse damage than the one caused by British governments, authorities, and soldiers. “It’s a legal issue and they [the republicans] turn into an armed one.” The journalist was desperate because he understood that the situation would be the excuse for a new British intervention (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, July 21, 1922, 5).

On July 8, Francesc Macià proposed in Barcelona the creation of a separatist-party movement inspired by Sinn Féin. During the act held at the Centre Autonomista de Dependents del Comerç i de la Indústria headquarters, the Catalanist association that trained office workers and salesmen, received some sheets with the Catalan and Irish flags. Regarding the Battle of Dublin, the propaganda assured that the separatist meeting was also a tribute “to the heroism of the last defenders of the Gresham Hotel and the other streets of Dublin and fields of Ireland who fight for the integrity of nationalist principles” (El Diluvio, July 9, 1922, 31). From the very beginning, therefore, separatism sided with de Valera.

In late July 1922 Raimon Negre i Balet visited Dublin. The lawyer was secretary of Nostra Parla, a Catalanist cultural association for the promotion of the Catalan language in all territories with Catalan speakers—Catalonia, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands (Graña 1995). He was on a study trip to London. There he met the former Dáil delegate in the British capital, Art O’Brien. The London-born Irish nationalist had been a former close collaborator of Michael Collins, but he was upset because had been sidelined in the negotiation process of the fall of 1921. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty he became a close collaborator of de Valera. By the time Negre i Balet met O’Brien, he was a staunch supporter of Republicans and the IRA (MacDiarmada 2020, 15, 157).

Interested in the Irish political situation, Negre i Balet traveled to Dublin. He arrived on July 22, and in the next days he wrote two chronicles that were published three weeks later in La Veu de Catalunya. The Catalanist rested, as he explained, in the hotel that had been de Valera’s headquarters in Dublin. ⁹ The Catalan described there were only two or three rooms that remained arranged for guests. As he described, on the stairs were still proclamations of Republicans pasted on the wall and the sacred images of the rooms were grouped in one corner making a small chapel (Negre i Balet, La Veu de Catalunya, July 29, 1922, 9).

The lawyer met the former Irish ambassador to Paris, Seán T. O’Kelly, an anti–Anglo-Irish Treaty, who told him that the agreement had been an English trick and that de Valera could win. The Catalanist also met Máirie O’Brien, also a fervent republican. The former Dáil press liaison in Madrid spent some months in Barcelona and Mallorca in the recent past and knew some Catalanists, due to her propagandist profile.

Negre i Balet also met the Minister of Publicity of the Irish Free State, Desmond Fitzgerald. The Irish politician knew the Catalan nationalist demands through the propaganda led by the Oficina d’Expansió Catalana [Catalan Expansion Office] in Paris and London promoted by the Lliga. As the Catalanist lawyer was carrying a camera, the minister secretary took a picture of them both (Negre i Balet, La Veu de Catalunya, August 11, 1922, 2). Negre i Balet asked for a free movement visa to visit the war zone, but it is not clear that he obtained it. In any case, he did not write any more chronicles.

On July 24, Art O’Brien prepared a two-page report on what the Irish Civil War was for him. Although we do not know if Negre i Balet obtained it on that day, already back in London, or later. The Republican propagandist document expressed “the position of affairs in Ireland now is undoubtedly very hard for any foreigner to understand. English propaganda throughout the world has raised a mystifying cloud between the eyes of the world and what is happening in Ireland.” ¹⁰

O’Brien argued that the explanation for what was happening in Ireland was, in fact, very simple. “And so Ireland’s delegates, in December 1921, allowed themselves to be trapped into signing articles of agreement for a treaty between Ireland and England, which articles of agreement actually gave away the two principles of sovereignty of the nation and unity of the nation—two principles which no generation of people in any country has any right to cede, and neither of which any generation in Ireland in the past had ever thought of ceding.”

He also added that his friend Terence MacSwiney had not died for the Anglo-Irish Treaty but for higher ideals. And, precisely for this reason, according to him, the mayor’s sacrifice had been carefully followed and appreciated in Barcelona. All in all, then, O’Brien conveyed to Negre i Balet that Republican forces “sustain a physical defeat, yet they have gained a moral victory, and the ideal of the republic will survive in the hearts and the minds of the people of Ireland until that Republic and all it stands for is freely recognised by the other nations of the world.”

Arthur Griffith died in Dublin on August 12. Antoni Rovira i Virgili, already as a leader of Acció Catalana but still writing in the newspaper of the Lliga, wrote an article glossing the figure of the president of the Dáil. The journalist and politician expressed that the Irishman had been told he was a traitor, a salesman like John Redmond and most Irish patriots since Daniel O’Connell and that he did not deserve it because he was the creator of “the strong and beautiful doctrine” of Sinn Féin, of what could be called the “philosophy of separatism” (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, September 15, 1922, 6).

Without mentioning him, Rovira i Virgili drew a parallel between Griffith and Enric Prat de la Riba. As the latter regarding Catalanism, the journalist assimilated the first to a father of modern Irish nationalism. Furthermore, he was aware that Griffith had published in 1904 The Ressurrection of Hungary. A Parallel for Ireland. An essay pointing at the Austrohungarian dual monarchy as a model for Ireland and England being the first the Hungarian equivalent. The same proposed by Prat de la Riba two years later for Catalonia and Castille within Spain (Griffith 1904; Ucelay-Da Cal 2013, 7–33). Grifith’s death, therefore, was not just any death.

Ten days later, the IRA killed Michael Collins in an ambush. Rovira lamented the death of the president of the provisional government of the Free State, a celebrity well known outside Ireland (Dolan and Murphy 2018, 207–215). The journalist maliciously asked if de Valera, “half Irish and half Spanish,” felt remorse. The journalist assumed that Collins’ army would have never ambushed the republican leader (Rovira i Virgili, La Veu de Catalunya, August 26, 1922, 5). The consecutive deaths of Griffith and Collins struck Rovira to the point of placing him in very distant position from the Irish Republicans. The monthly magazine D’ací d’allà, run by Lliga shareholders, also praised the figure of the two dead leaders (D’ací d’allà, September 1922, 17).

Surprisingly, however, in those days Negre i Balet, already returned to Barcelona, wrote to Art O’Brien (La Veu de Catalunya, September 3, 1922, 13). The politician and engineer Manuel Massó i Llorens had instructed him to find one “clever Irishmen who will come to Barcelona in order to speak in a Conference about the Irish question.” Massó, member of the Mancomunitat Assembly, had left the Lliga to join Acció Catalana. The lawyer—writing in English—defined him as “one of the most important men of the new nationalist radical party.” ¹¹

Negre i Balet proposed that O’Brien travel to Barcelona because he spoke French, aside from Spanish. Otherwise, he asked for the name of an Irishman who could express himself in French to explain “the Irish question, the story of the nationalist (Sinn Féin) movement, principally about the modern movement.” The costs of the conference, which should be held in October or November, would be borne by the Catalans and it would be, according to the lawyer, “very useful to Ireland and to Catalonia.”

Negre i Balet’s letter to O’Brian revealed interesting things. On one hand, that within Acció Catalana different sensibilities regarding the Irish Civil War coexisted: pro-treaty, like Rovira i Virgili, and antitreaty, such as Massó i Llorens and Negre i Balet. The letter also showed that Negre and Massó wanted an Irishman to talk about Ireland, as a lesson, but apart from the dispute that was taking place on the island—a struggle that they understood little and that bothered them because of its intrinsic complexity. The naive look of both had nothing to do with the goals that O’Brien was working for in London. He also had little interest in dealing with Catalan nationalism, which could not bring him any benefit. Quite the opposite, O’Brien saw Spain as a platform to obtain the South American republics’ reconnaissance for the Irish republic (MacDiarmada 2020, 132).

L’Intransigent, the newspaper of the separatist nationalist youths, gives another proof of the difficulty that Catalanists had in understanding what happened in Ireland. This publication, which had carried out an intense propaganda campaign around MacSwiney’s hunger strike, used the Irish Free State terminology and called its army “regular” and IRA “the irregulars” (L’Intransigent, August 9, 1922, 6; August 15, 1922, 2).

The new center-left party, Acció Catalanista, acquired the newspaper La Publicidad, written in Spanish, and Catalanized it, La Publicitat, from October 1. From the very beginning, the newspaper backed the pro-treaty side. Joan D. Casabosch, from Dublin, published a long article on the Irish constitution. He expressed that with it, Ireland would equate Canada and that it was on the path to complete independence. He criticized de Valera and his “insurgents” on the grounds that his position was “exaggerated and perhaps even manic” and called “childish” Gavan Duffy, the Anglo-Irish Treaty signer who now disowned the agreement (Casabosch, La Publicitat, October 5, 1922, 3).

In Dublin Casabosch spoke to George William Russell, whom he compared to Tolstoi. In the transcript of the conversation they had at the end of September, the collaborator of La Publicitat described the bad opinion that the Irish writer had regarding de Valera and the good one about Erskine Childers, despite considering that his idealism had led him to support the wrong political side. Russell was then a convinced pro-treaty (Casabosch, La Publicitat, October 7, 1922, 3).

In mid-October 1922, Negre i Balet wrote to O’Brian again. The Catalanist had received no response and thought that his letter, at the end of August, had been lost by a “Spanish” mail strike. ¹² The lawyer did not know that in August his Irish contact had been imprisoned in Dublin (MacDiarmada 2020, 165). By the end of the month, Negre i Balet asked O’Brian to receive a young Catalanist who had just arrived in London. He defined Josep Carner-Ribalta, in English, as “a very patriotic young man desirous of calling upon you in order to make acquaintance with you about the heroic Ireland.” He hoped he would treat Carner-Ribalta as the Irish had received him in London. ¹³

The young man was a 24-year-old Catalanist who had fled Catalonia several months ago to evade Spanish military service and, therefore, the war in Morocco. In London, Carner-Ribalta collaborated with the Oficina d’Expansió Catalana while he radicalized his Catalanism coming from the Lliga. In a year he would establish in Paris to become secretary of the separatist chief, Francesc Macià (Esteve 1999, 13–14).

In the end, O’Brien answered Negre i Balet. He explained his arrest by Irish Free State troops and apologized for not being able to travel to Barcelona. “Everything is in such an undecided state, and my own plans are so uncertain, that it is very difficult for me to make any arrangement of this nature.” He also did not suggest any alternative name and asked for more time in case he could settle his affairs and go to Catalonia himself. Once again, O’Brien continued his pro-republican campaign by informing him, but he did not mention Carner-Ribalta at all. ¹⁴

Negre i Balet and Massó i Llorens offered O’Brien to welcome him in Barcelona. “It would not only be interesting but very useful for your country that you come to Barcelona in order to inform de Catalan people who is right in the two general parties of the Irish people.” The Catalan lawyer had already assumed O’Brien’s point of view and told him, in English, “you know how much the world opinion is actually mistaken about this question because the Irish propaganda is almost quite on the hands of the Irish Free State and British Government.” ¹⁵

The Catalanist added that “if you come, as we wish, you might speak or read in French (not in Spanish, naturally) and to make some suggestions about the Catalan problem, the sympathy of the Catalan men for the Irish Republic (mainly for Mr. de Valera, for Mr. MacSwiney, etc…) showing also that only with a patriotism very strong, strong until the sacrifice, can the peoples attain their freedom.” Negre i Balet added that “it would be very interesting that you could show some views of the Irish people (projections with the portraits of Mr. de Valera, the student Kevin Barry, streets of Dublin, and so on).” Finally, the lawyer told O’Brien that he could be “really boasted” of being arrested and imprisoned by the Free State Troops. ¹⁶

By the end of November, O’Brien was not able to leave London to go to Barcelona. ¹⁷ As the Irish delegate’s life became more complicated, Negre i Balet asked him for the anthem “of a Republican nation which is fighting still for her freedom.” Catalan nationalists wanted to play it at an event in a nationalist centre in Arenys de Mar, a coastal town north of Barcelona. The anthems of Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia would also be played. ¹⁸

On the same dates, while some members of Acció Catalana kept touch with the antitreaty propagandist, the party’s newspaper La Publicitat explained the approval of the Irish Free State Constitution and its content. Additionally, Acció Catalana would translate it into Catalan and disseminate it. The position of Massó i Llorens and Negre i Balet, therefore, was apparently minoritarian in the party (Rovira i Virgili, La Publicitat, November 29, 1922, 1).

Meanwhile, as Rovira i Virgili left La Veu de Catalunya for La Publicitat, the director of the regionalist newspaper took over the information related to Ireland. Joaquim Pellicena maintained the line initiated by the republican politician. Despite the deaths of Griffith and Collins, he claimed that the Free State had achieved the pacification of the country (Pellicena, La Veu de Catalunya, November 15, 1922, 8). Some days later, he lamented Ireland’s “discouraging” spectacle of the execution of Erskine Childers (Pellicena, La Veu de Catalunya, November 28, 1922, 9). La Veu pointed out that the Irish case was a lesson for Catalan nationalists that should not be underestimated. The newspaper explained that the government of the Free State had been “forced” to execute rebels in a way that England had never done before.

At the same time, the publication sustained that in Ireland the divisions between patriots were due to “ethnic, ancestral causes, new reproductions of hereditary social diseases.” While in Catalonia, the “germs of civil discord are essentially foreign to the internal constitution of our country, they are traces of foreign mentalities, they are the effect of the long decline of the Catalan personality.” Therefore, according to La Veu, Irish patriots “to overcome anarchic factors must fight national vices, their own vices that must be ratified,” whereas Catalonia had to fight external causes imported by outsiders, “we fight exotic vices, extranational vices, that a secular coexistence had entrusted to us” (La Veu de Catalunya, December 20, 1922, 8).

Rovira i Virgili did the same thing in La Publicitat. The reporter stated that Childers’s shooting was a very painful event for those men who sympathetically followed the Irish struggle. He felt the same grief as with Collins’s death. “But this pain of ours cannot turn into protest or insult against the Dublin government. He represents the vast majority of the Irish and has the undisputed right to defend himself against armed rebels.” The journalist insisted that “no state, no government, can allow a minority, no matter how generous their feelings, to disturb the life of the country and make war on the institutions that are daughters of the will of the people and the men who represent these institutions” (Rovira i Virgili, La Publicitat, November 30, 1922, 1).

In mid-December 1922, L’Estat Català addressed a greeting to Ireland and India “two sister races in the ideal of liberation,” two disparate models with a shared goal, to liberate themselves from British domination. And, with Éamon de Valera’s face on the cover, the magazine expressed its admiration for Ireland: “we love you, but we envy you at the same time.” It was the fortnightly publication of the Estat Català, the party which Francesc Macià had been promoting since the summer (L’Estat Català, December 15, 1922, 1; Whelan 2019)

As a response to this and other pro-Republican Catalanist propaganda, Rovira i Virgili expressed that he did not like de Valera for his “spiritual tone, which is for blood, both Spanish and Irish”—his father was born in Spain—(Fanning 2015, 3) The journalist considered that he had a “fanaticism and a lack of human understanding” that assimilated him to the Iberian people—except the Catalans. The politician argued that in Catalonia no party, no group, no man really supported the Republican thesis. For Rovira, the praise they received from some Catalan separatists was the result of admiration for “the undeniable heroism of the rebels and for the sympathy aroused by the ideal of absolute independence.” But these same Catalanists had repeatedly spoken of the possibility of federal ties with other nations. Ergo the Anglo-Irish Treaty could satisfy their position (for the origins of de Valeras’ spirituality, see Fanning [2015, 12–13]).

At the beginning of 1923, Joaquim Pellicena continued to mourn the executions. He criticized Republicans, defining them as “rebels” and “fanatics.” On the contrary, the journalist spoke of “the constructive action of the Provisional Government and of Collins and Griffith” (Pellicena, La Veu de Catalunya, January 4, 1923, 9). At the time, La Veu de Catalunya made clear that for the Lliga the dominion was positive, despite not being fully independent, and pointed to the Irish Constitution as a model of freedom (La Veu de Catalunya, January 13, 1923, 9; Pellicena, La Veu de Catalunya, February 22, 1923, 8).

On January 21, La Publicitat published an important editorial that can also be assumed as a doctrine of Acció Catalana. The newspaper stated that the agreement between Dublin and London was not a federation but an association. It defined federation as a pact based on the “full freedom of the nation,” and it expressed that if the formula of Ireland and the great British colonies were to be regarded as federal, “we would say that the latter regime, without being perfect, is very close to our ideal.”

The editorial considered that the liberties that Ireland had obtained such as not being harsh in the war without an agreement of its Parliament, that there would be no British troops in its territory, and that its flag would wave only as a national flag or that Ireland would have its own international representation abroad were desirable for Catalonia (La Publicitat, January 21, 1923, 1).

Finally, at the end of January 1923, Art O’Brien informed Negre i Balet that he could not travel to Barcelona for two reasons. “Firstly, because the complicated and urgent nature of our country’s affairs keeps me tied here altogether for the moment and seems likely to do so for a long time to come. Secondly, I find that I would have very great difficulty in getting a passport.” He also thanked his friend for his support and for the Catalan’s tribute to Terence MacSwiney. ¹⁹

In mid-April, L’Estat Català mourned the death on April 10 of Liam Lynch, the commander in chief of the IRA (Shannon 2023). According to the separatist publication, “another Sinn Féin leader has been wounded by the betrayal of the brother of the same country.” It added that “every time we learn of a painful event to the detriment of Irish Republican patriots, we can’t hide our feelings either.” Francesc Macià’s publication felt connected to the Republicans “for a possible community of thoughts and ideals. The heart tells us that like them we must fight against our own to save the integrity of our national freedom.” He also praised Countess Markiewicz and de Valera, “even though it has been said that you come from a Spanish race, our sympathy is with you” (L’Estat Català, April 15, 1923, 5).

On the other hand, despite lamenting it, Rovira i Virgili noted that, according to London reports, Lynch’s death would mark the end of the War (La Publicitat, April 14, 1923, 3). On April 18, he gave a lecture in Terrassa, an industrial city on the outskirts of Barcelona, in which he expressed that the Anglo-Irish Treaty would be ideal for Catalonia and not the federation, which according to him involved a narrower relationship (La Publicitat, April 22, 1923, 5). All in all, then, the journalist did not think the same as the former editorial of La Publicitat, as Rovira preferred dominion to federation.

Conclusions

After nearly 11 months of warfare, by the end of May 1923, the Irish Civil War ended with the victory of the pro–Anglo-Irish Treaty side. The fact that the episode had displaced Catalanism became clear when one of the main journalists of La Publicitat, Carles Soldevila, asked Catalan nationalists to set aside the constant invocation of Ireland. He demanded that Francesc Cambó, the leader of the Lliga, stop using Ireland to scare the citizens. “Neither Acció Catalana is, for now, the host of exalted people led by Éamon de Valera, nor is the Lliga the group of heroic men who have achieved the constitution of the Free State of Ireland.” He also added that even the “maximalists of Catalonia could not stand the comparison with the Irish republicans” (Soldevila, La Publicitat, May 6, 1923, 6).

In fact, the outbreak of the Irish Civil War dislocated and surprised Catalan nationalists. Ever since Catalanists became interested in Ireland at the end of the 19th century, the defense of a national movement against an empire allowed a comfortable position for a stateless nationalism without self-government, such as the Catalan one. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty broke that simple scheme, though.

Even though few intellectuals are involved in the debate of ideas about the treaty’s consequences, during the year and a half analyzed in this article we can sustain that Catalan nationalism was uneasy about the struggle between Irish nationalists, owing to the damage it had done to the image of other nationalist movements such as the Catalan one. Without being able to stay on the sideline, every segment of Catalanism tried to adopt a position in accordance with Catalan internal politics.

However, the analysis—when existent—was focused on Ireland’s relationship with the British Empire. It was not easy to understand what a domain meant and how it differed from a federation. Otherwise, Catalanists did not analyze whether there were social or economic factors behind the support or rejection of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, even though there were some (Ferriter 2022, 101, 122).

Thus Lliga, representative of conservative Catalanism, was in favor of the treaty. The regionalists considered the concession of the Irish dominion as positive due to its accidental approach to the Spanish sort of regime and its priority to the Catalan self-government. The government of the Mancomunitat, chaired by the Lliga leader Josep Puig i Cadafalch, also supported the Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins’ option. Francesc Cambó compared Acció Catalana with de Valeras’ republicans in a nonsense parallel.

Catalanist republicanism represented by the tiny Esquerra Catalana also supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Acció Catalana, the republican-oriented center-left party, also favored the Irish Free State. However, some of its members, difficult to quantify, supported the anti-treaty side. On the other hand, Catalan separatism—especially Francesc Macià and Estat Català—with a leftist inclination, rejected the treaty and from the outset supported the republican option and the figure of Éamon de Valera (Butlletí de l’Estat Català, September 1, 1924, 1).

The Irish Civil War took place at a time when Catalanism was becoming radicalized. From an initial dominance for almost two decades of a moderate Catalanism, represented by the Regionalist League and some minority Catalanist republican parties, it passed to a more complex scheme with the appearance of Acció Catalana and Estat Català, founded in 1922.

The Irish conflict thus coincided with a time when these two last formations were defining their ideology, programs, and objectives to Catalan society. The party that suffered most to define itself in relation to the Civil War was Acció Catalana: it was not as moderate as the Lliga and tried to distinguish itself from it, but it was not as radical as Estat Català either. Within Acció, most individuals agreed with the postulates of Griffith and Collins but some others with those of De Valera.

There are many analyses of the behavior of nationalist political parties and movements within a state. Comparative studies between the behavior and external influences of nationalist movements are still relatively few in the field of history, more in the field of political science (Mylonas and Tudor 2021). When they are there, they often elaborate, with broad views, on the history of the compared territories. This simplifies the analysis. What this article has done is precisely the opposite.

Focus on a specific experience to study how the different factions of a nationalist movement analyzed the historical events of another country. And thus, draw conclusions that serve for future studies in this field. As many academics have highlighted, the comparative analysis of nationalisms, movements, and national practices can be very relevant to understanding the mechanisms that nationalism uses to promote and explain itself (Ahram et al. 2018).

As Núñez Seixas (2017) put it, mutual influences operate at the level of political strategies adopted by nationalist movements, and at specific junctures, an authentic demonstration effect, subordinated in turn to the dynamics and internal characteristics of each movement. There is an instrumental effect that affects the ideology and political praxis of the nationalist movement. There is also an empathic effect linked to a feeling of solidarity spontaneous, professed by its militants. Empathy adds legitimacy to the cause of the nationalists, who see themselves as actors in a world of nations fighting for their full freedom.

This case study is important for studies on nationalism because it demonstrates with a concrete example some of the reasons why a nationalist movement has difficulties in articulating a uniform discourse about external models. In the Catalan case, it can be clearly observed how the uniform perspective, regarding the Irish nationalist movement and its demand for autonomy that Catalanism had maintained until the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, fragmented when this autonomy became a fact.

The same trend that substate nationalist movements claim to observe by comparing themselves with other international examples is often transferred to the analysis that is made of them. Thus, when academics speak about Catalan or Welsh or Basque or Flemish nationalism, they, as this article shows, should ask which of its branches leads the action but also when, as the temporal axis is also crucial. As Conversi (1993) stated in his study of the Basque and Catalan cases, the influences between nationalist movements exerted by external models show a domino effect on occasions, but of limited scope. Copies of actions and models are often limited to the sectors of these more radical nationalist movements.

A great deal of work has been done in recent years comparing the development of some nationalist movements (Hroch 2015; Morgan and Ucelay-Da Cal 2015). But it is also necessary to explore what influences they have received from each other and, specifically, their internal currents, to better understand them. Thus, the present work wants to be a contribution in this direction.