This beginning of 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Catalan Council of the European Movement in Exile. Sectors of Catalan society participated in the European project from its beginnings. I hope the following lines help put this vocation in context.
The Hague Congress was held in May 1948, in which men and women met who laid the foundations of the European project of unification and reconciliation. From the so-called Congress of Europe, presided over by Winston Churchill, came concrete proposals such as the creation of the Council of Europe, the College of Europe in Bruges (initially intended as a training and meeting place for young Germans and French), the proposal for a European Convention on Human Rights and a European Court as well as the first sketches of economic integration. On the Catalan side, Dr. Josep Trueta, exiled in the United Kingdom, and Professor Josep Xirau, exiled in France, participated. The Spanish delegation was completed by Salvador de Madariaga (a man very active in the first steps of the European project) and Indalecio Prieto (former minister and at the time president of the PSOE in exile). The success of the Congress and the emergence of a Europeanism of action led the promoters of the initiative, the International Committee of Movements for European Unity, to establish themselves as a European Movement in October of that same year , to promote a united and federal Europe.
Catalan and Basque politicians and intellectuals in exile were quick to establish themselves as interlocutors of the international European Movement. There was hope that the democratic wave would reach Spain. The years between 1945 and 1950 were those in which the Franco regime was most isolated and in danger of being overthrown by the victorious powers of the Second World War. On March 1, 1946, France closed the border with Spain and on December 12, 1946, the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution urging member states to withdraw ambassadors accredited to Spain (only leaving those of Portugal, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and the Holy See).
The Basque government in exile was the best organized and diplomatically recognized. For some strange reasons they arrived late at the Hague Congress and were only listed as guests and not as some of the 750 Europeans attending the Congress (among them, Trueta and Xirau). The international European Movement had agreed to recognize a hypothetical Spanish council as long as all democratic political tendencies were included. Salvador de Madariaga got in touch with the lehendakari in exile, José Antonio Aguirre, to make possible an interlocutor body of the European Movement with the Spanish exile. In January 1949, the Basque governments - Aguirre and José Maria - and Catalan - Josep Irla, Carles Pi and Ramon Nogués - met to address the creation of a federal council.
On February 7, 1949, Europeanist personalities met at the headquarters of the Basque government in exile in Paris to set up the Federal Council, which was the federation of the Catalan and Basque nuclei with other Spanish Europeanists opposed to the regime. The Catalan Council as such was formalized in June of the same year and Carles Pi i Sunyer was its first president.
For 75 years, the Catalan Council of the European Movement has encouraged the values of Europeanism in a country that has never experienced significant outbreaks of Euroscepticism. We hope it will also be like this in the future. The European elections to which we are called in five months will be a magnificent opportunity to talk again about the benefits of deepening and expanding the European project.
