Rafael Casanova was a traitor

Sez Miquel Porta Perales.

Trevor @ Saturday April 16th 2005 21:43

I already knew that the anarchists were the only people ever to ban Catalan, that the sardana thrived during Franco’s reign, that Barcelona was the capital of bull-fighting during its glory years, and that el Barça performed better than Real Madrid during the worst periods of Franquista repression. Now here in a Vanguardia interview with Miquel Porta Perales is another blow to Catalan National History:

- What have you got against Rafael Casanova?
- He’s a clear example of the distortions spread in Catalonia by the prevailing national progressivism.
- Why do you say that?
- Homage is paid to him as if he were a hero-martyr of the resistance against Philip V in Catalonia, but the truth is that he spent the night of the 10th to the 11th of September, 1714 sleeping, that they had to wake him up and take him to the front, and that he was only slightly wounded there…
- That is to say, he didn’t die.
- Nothing of the sort! He obtained a death certificate from the doctor, burned the archives, delegated the surrender to another councillor, fled disguised as a friar, and settled in Sant Boi.
- To carry on defending Catalonia?
- He practised law happily, with a pardon from Philip V, and lived like a king at the Bourbon court until his peaceful death. Isn’t that the behaviour of a treasonous traitor [botifler]?
- If it was really like that, then why do the Catalan parties pay him an annual floral tribute?
- That illustrates the manipulation, the invention of a history of Catalonia in the days of the Renaixença, an absolute fable that our national progressivism continues to perpetuate.

“National progressivism” has nothing to do with progressivism in the States and is the term used by Porta in his Si un persa viatgĂ©s a Catalunya. Un pamflet sobre el nacional progressisme catalĂ  (2005) to describe the bizarre mixture of invented ethno-history and waffle about social justice that dominates, in various forms, the agenda of the principal political parties here with the exception of the PP. Porta makes the case for rationalist politics based around citizens rather than “nations” (or bi-nations, as he jestingly calls bilingual Catalonia) and as such is unlikely to be able to retire on the proceeds of this book.

(Tip via a dangerous revolutionary, to whom thanks.)


Categories: Decline, Les bourgeois

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  1. marc sabatés
    September 9th 2006 10:49

    visca rafael casanova , lluis companys , josep sunyol , fusimana sabatĂ©s , ….. visca catalunya lliure //// catalunya no Ă©s espanya, catalunya Ă©s una nacio .
    marc-sabates.com
    barcelona estat catalĂ 

  2. marc sabatés
    September 9th 2006 10:56

    je suis nè en france , ma famille Ă  ètè tuè par les franquistes. j ‘ apprends le catalan , ecoute lluis llach , raimon, maria del mar bonet, je regarde du joan miro et le 11 septembre est ma fète nationale car la catalogne est une nation et depuis toujours , j ‘encourage le barça notre armèe catalane. c’ est beau d ‘aider l ‘ unicef ! rafael casanova , je le vènère , comme lluis companys , fusimana sabatĂ©s , josep sunyol i garriga et je vois qu’ un bon prèsident pour la nation catalane en 2006 senyor josep lluis carod-rovira .
    marc sabatés
    83870 signes frança “catalonia is not spain”

  3. Trevor
    September 11th 2006 19:58

    Sometimes it’s smarter to let your hands drag along the ground.

  4. kalebeul » Revisionist version of September 11 1714
    September 10th 2008 14:43

    [...] around for ages, but I don’t think anyone has actually produced a substantiated version. Miquel Porta Perales’ book certainly didn’t, and the references given to me by someone else turned out to be bogus. I [...]

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