I had written a letter to Lluís Companys so that I could cross the border without anything happening to me and do whatever was necessary for the factory to run without obstacles. And in order to prevent the skipper's absence from causing a seizure, but when speaking with my Spanish traveling companions they advised me that it was better not to do it. They understand that today Companys is a prisoner of the unions and that even if he admitted it, the others would not respect him and could upset me.”
In mid-August 1936, Francesc Llonch writes from France to his son Joan, in Andorra. They have fled to avoid certain death at the hands of the revolutionary committees. The Llonch, one of the main families of textile industrialists in Sabadell, tried throughout the Civil War to direct the destiny of the company they left behind with trusted men. And, risking their lives, they gain the trust of the committees, while they inform and receive instructions from the bosses.
To Joan Llonch i Salas. Entrepreneur, patron and Catalanist politician (Ars Foundation), Josep Lluís Martín Berbois (Sabadell, 1978) traces the life of the industrialist and financier (1902-1976) and three generations of this textile family since the mid-19th century. La Vanguardia advances the content of a volume of six hundred pages drawn up from the investigation of a fortnight's archives and, above all, the family fund, which includes correspondence and memories.
Sometenist, affiliated with the Regionalist League and later with the Catalan League, in the twenties and thirties, Joan Llonch organized the "Cal Llonch Mondays" in the large library of his house. Gatherings with artists and intellectuals from Sabadell, such as the writers Josep M. Trabal, Joan Oliver and Armand Obiols, from the Colla de Sabadell, and, more sporadically, the league politician Joan Estelrich. As a result of these contacts, Llonch became friends with Josep Pla.
On April 14, 1931, Llonch entered the future Palau de la Generalitat with a journalist's card. “The spectacle was dantesque, the screams, the disorder, the hysteria reigned in all environments and classes.” The disappointment over the defeat of the League against Macià's ERC led him, in his memoirs, to compare the proclamation of the Republic with the beginning of the rebellion. “I only remember one similar vision – made worse by armed exhibitionism and by the smell of blood, hatred, extermination and revenge.”
That July 19, 1936, he found the man from Sabadell at the Ritz hotel in Barcelona, where the family had a permanent room. Hiding in the basement he escaped from the revolutionaries. At the end of the month he crossed the border into Paris. Soon his father's company was collectivized and his home requisitioned. From Parisian exile, Joan Llonch acted as economic advisor to the Technical Board of Burgos. In harmony with the regionalist leaders Francesc Cambó and Joan Ventosa, he helped collect the 128 signatures of Catalans, most of them militants or close to the Catalan League, who in October 1936 signed an adhesion to the Francoist side. He also raised money for the cause. “I spoke with several people about the need to send money to the nationalists in London,” he informed Cambó.
The latter placed him as head of the Propaganda and Press Office in favor of the rebels at the beginning of 1937. “I am happy that you can help,” said his wife, Isabel Gorina, daughter of another Sabadell textile family. She was on the run in Switzerland with her son, Francesc. She also explained other information to him. “In Barcelona the appearance is almost normal, and there are not so many murders, but the FAI police are looking for the significant people.” The marriage is reunited in spring.
A year and a half later, the interference of the Franco delegate in France, Pedro J. Rivière, in the Office's tasks ended Llonch's patience. The man from Sabadell left him and at the beginning of the summer of 1938 he went to Franco's Spain, where his father was, who, ill, would die in the autumn. At that moment, Joan already sees that even if Franco wins—as he wishes—things will go wrong. Catalanism is suffering and will suffer a strong crisis due to the fact that other problems have been felt more than the love for Catalonia – he tells Cambó. “The mistakes of the people, of a majority, are paid for even by the minorities who saw it clearly.”
At the beginning of 1939, Llonch returned to Sabadell. “I have found things quite good, the business is bad, but it can be fixed, the house is a mess, the people are thin and scared.” And he adds: "Not even the Catalan flag flew under the Catalan sky and the few that, hidden with love and fear for the citizens, served to turn them into red-gold flags to look good to the victors." Immediately, he resumed the company's activity with his brothers.
“Llonch was never an admirer of Franco or the regime. Like Cambó, he believed that once Franco won the war, the monarchy would be established, just as in the time of Primo de Rivera. He was always a fervent democratic and constitutional monarchist, and he was never a Francoist,” Martin Berbois tells this newspaper. On the other hand, he “was a fervent admirer of the regionalist leader, to whom he even asked for a photograph. “Joan Llonch was the Cambó of Sabadell.”
During the regime, Llonch progressed. Among others, he became, like his father, president of several companies, dedicated to the manufacture of engines, clothing and the supply of water in Sabadell. At the same time, he got his company to take advantage of the Stabilization Plan to gain momentum in the sixties, the golden decade of the wool industry. Llonch did not get into politics, but he presided over the Sabadellense Work Accident Mutual Fund, the Academy of Fine Arts and the Board of Trustees of the Industrial School.
He also established important contacts and strong ties with Montserrat. In October 1968, for example, she was at Abbot Escarré's deathbed at the Plato clinic in Barcelona. “Voices trembling in prayers, blurred eyes, a knot around the neck with emotion, silence and little by little Father Aureli ends. He turns his head further and the doctor raises his head that was resting on the patient's chest and with the gesture, he cannot handle his voice, he tells us that he is dead.
Aside from his role as an industrialist, in the mid-forties Llonch joined the board of directors of Banco de Sabadell, then a small local entity. Soon, as CEO, he gained prominence. He participated in the entity's expansion strategy and promoted the regular purchase of works of art, especially paintings. While the bank progressed, textiles lost prominence.
In March 1976, Joan Llonch presided over the bank. But it was for a few months, because he died in November. The following year his company closed, like many others in Sabadell. In Catalonia, between 1978 and 1982 more than a hundred left the textile union, the majority due to cessation of activity.
The city dedicated a plaza to him, next to the bank's central services. “Industrialist and patron of culture,” says the plaque that commemorates him. The biography, which Martin Berbois will present on April 8 in Sabadell, accompanied by the historian Borja de Riquer and the president of Banc Sabadell, Josep Oliu, explains these facets and, in an elegant way, also the others.
