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Heribert Barrera

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Heribert Barrera i Costa
7th Speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia
In office
10 April 1980 – 17 May 1984
Preceded byFrancesc Farreras i Duran
Succeeded byMiquel Coll i Alentorn
Member of the Parliament of Catalonia
In office
10 April 1980 – 4 April 1988
Member of the Congress of Deputies
In office
1 July 1977 – 9 April 1980
Personal details
Born
Heribert Barrera i Costa

(1917-07-06)6 July 1917
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Died27 August 2011(2011-08-27) (aged 94)
Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Political partyRepublican Left of Catalonia
Alma materUniversity of Montpellier
Sorbonne
OccupationPolitician
ProfessionChemist

Heribert Barrera i Costa (6 July 1917 – 27 August 2011) was a Catalan politician and chemist. A member of the Republican Left of Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya), he was the first President of the Parliament of Catalonia following the restoration of the Catalan institutions after Franco's dictatorship, serving from 1980 to 1984 (the seventh overall since its original foundation).[1][2]

He was the son of Martí Barrera i Maresma, a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia during the Second Republic and minister of the Generalitat de Catalunya.[3][4]

Throughout his life, Barrera was committed to the cause of the Catalan Republic and the defense of Catalonia's national rights and civil liberties. He became a symbol of the 20th-century Catalan independence movement.[5][6][7]

Political career

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Republican youth

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Heribert Barrera began his political career in 1934 when he joined the Federació Nacional d'Estudiants de Catalunya (National Federation of Catalan Students) and the Bloc Escolar Nacionalista (Nationalist School Bloc).[8] The following year, he became a member of the youth wing of Republican Left of Catalonia.

In late 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, he volunteered for the Republican Army and served as an artillery soldier on the Aragon front and the Segre front. In 1939, he went into exile, ending up in the Argelès-sur-Mer internment camp,[9] where he remained for a week until he was rescued through the intervention of Pere Bosch-Gimpera. He then moved to Narbonne, where he stayed for a month, and afterwards to Montpellier.[10]

While in exile, he is believed to have participated in the French resistance by collaborating with the Louis Brun network, although no documentary evidence confirms this. In 1946, he became Secretary General of the Federació Nacional d'Estudiants de Catalunya.[11]

In 1941, his mother, Purificació Costa i Lloret, and his sisters Angelina and Rosa Maria returned to Barcelona without being harassed.[12] In 1949, he married Renée Mestrallet.

In 1952, he returned to Catalonia and assumed leadership of the underground Republican Left of Catalonia, which had been severely weakened following the arrests of 1946 and 1947. At the time, the party was loosely organized around Miquel Ferrer, Manuel Juliachs, Pere Puig, Pau Ris, Joan Rodríguez, Jaume Serra, and Josep Subirats.[13]

The Transition

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After returning to Catalonia in 1952, by 1968 he was concerned about the predominant role of the PSUC and the MSC in the anti-Francoist struggle. Like many other left-wing politicians, he joined the Socialist and Democratic Reorganization of Catalonia led by Josep Pallach in November 1974,[14] although he eventually abandoned the project due to reluctance within the bases of his party, ERC.[15] ERC elected him secretary general in 1976, a position he would renew until 1987.[16]

Since the party had not been legalized by the Suárez government, ERC had to run in the first democratic elections of 1977 in an unusual coalition with the Party of Labour of Spain and some members of the National Front of Catalonia, resulting in Barrera becoming a deputy in the Spanish Congress of Deputies.[17]

As a participant in the resulting Assembly of Parliamentarians, Barrera rejected any pact with the Spanish government unless the 1932 Statute of Catalonia was restored and the republican government in exile of Josep Tarradellas was returned; a position he had defended years earlier.[18] Later, he publicly disagreed with the draft of the new 1979 Statute, although he ultimately voted in favor of it.[19]

Professional career

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Barrera studied chemistry at the University of Barcelona.[3] In 1939, when exiled to France, he only received recognition for his high school studies and had to start university studies again,[20] obtaining degrees in Mathematics and Chemical engineering at the University of Montpellier, and later earned a doctorate in Physics at the Sorbonne (Paris).[3][4] Between 1948 and 1951, he was a professor at the University of Montpellier.[4] He was an assistant professor and lecturer of electrochemistry at the Faculty of Sciences; he was also a research associate at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Hampshire.

In 1952, upon returning to Catalonia,[3] he refused to sign the obligatory Principios Fundamentales del Movimiento, which prevented him from teaching at the University of Barcelona,[20] and worked in the chemical industry until 1959, when he received a postdoctoral fellowship and studied and researched for a year at the University of New Hampshire.[21]

He returned to Catalonia in 1968 to work as a chemistry professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona,[4] and in 1969 returned to the United States to work at an American engineering firm.[21] He was hired as a professor of Inorganic chemistry at the UAB in 1970, where he worked until his retirement in 1984.[3]

Barrera authored numerous scientific articles in international journals as well as political articles in Catalan and international press. In 1949, he was awarded the Prat de la Riba Prize of the Institute for Catalan Studies for his work New contributions to the synthesis of aryl aliphatic acids and the theory of intramolecular acylation.[3]

He was responsible for the theoretical chemistry section of the Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana.[22] He was president of the Catalan Society of Physical, Chemical and Mathematical Sciences from 1976 to 1978, and president of the science section of the Institute for Catalan Studies, of which he later became emeritus member. He was also a member of foreign scientific institutions such as the Chemical Society of France and the American Chemical Society.[23]

Civic career

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Presidents Barrera and Rigol voting in Nou Barris during the Catalan independence referendums in 2011.

He had a very active role in Catalan society: Between 1977 and 1979, Barrera was a member of the Catalan Council of the European Movement. He was president of the Club of Friends of UNESCO of Barcelona, president (1989–1997) and honorary president of the Ateneu Barcelonès, and president of the Association of Former Deputies to the Parliament of Catalonia (1997–2003). In his later years, he was a member of the advisory council of Òmnium Cultural.[24] In July 2012, he was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of the Barcelona City Council.[25] On 18 September 2012, he was posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of the Generalitat of Catalonia.[26]

He died on 27 August 2011 at the Hospital de Barcelona and was buried at the Reus Cemetery.

Controversies

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Towards the end of his public life, Barrera made several controversial public statements, which some[who?] perceived as xenophobic. He expressed support for the sterilization of people with mental disabilities of genetic origin,[27] and warned of the dangers of immigration and the growing presence of foreigners in Catalonia.[28]

In 2012, the Barcelona City Council, governed by Xavier Trias, awarded him the city's Gold Medal with the support of the PSC and ICV. However, on 23 September 2020, the PSC, Barcelona en Comú, PP, and Ciutadans voted to revoke the honor. The plenary session in which the revocation was decided had to be repeated because Manuel Valls had mistakenly proposed the withdrawal using the name "Heribert Barrera i López" instead of "Heribert Barrera i Costa".[29]

Personal archive

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The documentary archive of the former President of the Parliament of Catalonia was acquired by the Department of Culture and deposited at the National Archive of Catalonia in 2022. According to the Department, it was a delicate operation because the archive had been circulating in private markets. The archive occupies 1.2 meters in volume and mainly consists of Barrera's correspondence between 1940 and 1980. It includes 308 letters from 67 correspondents, 111 photographs, 32 monographs, and 57 copies of magazines published in exile.[30]

References

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  1. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa (1980–1984)". Parlament de Catalunya (archived). Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  2. ^ "Mor l'històric Heribert Barrera, el primer president del Parlament restaurat". Ara. 27 August 2011.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana (in Catalan). Retrieved 18 July 2025.
  4. ^ a b c d Mestre, Jesús (1998). ""Barrera i Maresma, Martí"". Diccionari Biogràfic de Dones (in Catalan). Associació de Dones Investigadores i Tecnòlogues. p. 106.
  5. ^ "Un segle de lluita en tots els fronts". Ara. 27 August 2011.
  6. ^ "Mor Heribert Barrera, després d'una vida de lluita nacional". El Punt Avui. 28 August 2011.
  7. ^ "Muere Heribert Barrera, primer presidente del Parlament catalán". La Vanguardia. 27 August 2011.
  8. ^ "El caràcter republicà". El Punt Avui. 28 August 2011.
  9. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  10. ^ Faulí, Josep (1 February 1979). "Heribert Barrera, entre la ciencia y la política". Destino (in Spanish). pp. 8–11.
  11. ^ Paluzie, Elisenda (30 August 2011). "Barrera, patriota i universitari". El Punt Avui. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  12. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa: Semblança biogràfica" (PDF). Institut d'Estudis Catalans. 2020. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  13. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  14. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  15. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  16. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  17. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  18. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  19. ^ "Heribert Barrera i Costa". Fundació Josep Irla. Retrieved 2025-07-18.
  20. ^ a b See: "Destino: El exilio español en Francia" (source needed).
  21. ^ a b See: Biography of Heribert Barrera at ERC archives (source needed).
  22. ^ Balcells, Albert; Pujol, Enric (2002). Història de l'Institut d'Estudis Catalans. Institut d'Estudis Catalans. p. 175. ISBN 978-84-7283-656-3.
  23. ^ Source: Various scientific society records (source needed).
  24. ^ "Èxit incontestable d'una jornada històrica". VilaWeb. 10 July 2010. Archived from the original on 13 July 2010.
  25. ^ "Barcelona awards the Gold Medal to Heribert Barrera". Vilaweb. 18 July 2012.
  26. ^ Sallés, Quico (18 September 2012). "Artur Mas: "President Barrera was right to demand a state of his own"". Nació Digital. Retrieved 24 September 2020.
  27. ^ Vila, Enric (2001). Què pensa Heribert Barrera?. Ágora. ISBN 84-8437-146-8.
  28. ^ "Barrera says that Catalonia will disappear if massive immigration continues" (in Spanish). El Mundo. Retrieved 2019-07-14.
  29. ^ "The colossal error by Manuel Valls that forces a repeat vote on the Heribert Barrera issue". VilaWeb. 23 September 2020. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
  30. ^ "The Department of Culture rescues part of Heribert Barrera's documentary archive". Retrieved 2022-01-27.

Bibliography

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See also

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Heribert Barrera.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Heribert Barrera i Costa.
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