This year that is now ending - specifically, on April 6 - marked the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the birth of Joan Baptista Roca i Caball, which for many has gone unnoticed, even though it is one of the most important politicians that Catalonia has produced during the 20th century.
Everything seems to indicate that he was formed in the orbit of the Unió Catalanista groups of Domènec Martí and Julià, but, at the age of seventeen, his cousin Joan B. Viza steered him towards traditionalism, which, at that time , worked in full collaboration with Catalanism.
On May 12, 1923, he married Montserrat Junyent, daughter of the head of the Traditionalist Community of Catalonia, Miquel Junyent iRovira. Then, he became the born leader of Carlism and the great hope of this trend for the future.
Another great passion of Roca and Caball was football. In 1925, after a monumental whistle to the Spanish national anthem in a match between Club Esportiu Júpiter and FC Barcelona in tribute to the Orfeó Català, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera closed the Orfeó Català and the locals and the FC Barcelona field. The Carlists worked hard to reopen them. In the new Barça board, Roca i Caball was the secretary. From 1930 he was also president of the Catalan Football Federation and, in 1937, during his exile in France, he was appointed by Ricard Cabot to represent Spain at FIFA. Beyond his sporting positions, he conspired heavily against the dictatorship and, as a result of these activities, he was arrested and taken to Madrid.
In 1930, the Carlist party drafted a Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia. The ideas and much of the writing were from Roca and Caball. This statute, among other aspects, affirmed that the towns of the Spanish State would freely federate and retain full and absolute autonomy. The Catalan territory was made up of its four provinces, without renouncing the revision of the borders that enclosed the old strict Catalonia, what today we call Països Catalans.
The inalienable rights and freedoms of the Catalans included the freedom of worship (despite the fact that the Catholic faith could not be despised), of thought, expression and the press. It granted Catalan the status of sole official language. Military service would be voluntary and Catalonia would provide the Confederal State with a quota of recruits. An economic concert would regulate the proportion with which Catalonia would contribute to the general expenses of the confederation.
With the advent of the Republic, Jaumista Carlism merged with other currents and things changed in a big way. Faced with the party's position regarding the Statute of Catalonia of 1932, the Roca i Caball group decided to leave the party and organize a new one.
On November 7, 1931, the newspaper El Matí and La Veu de Catalunya published the founding manifesto of the Democratic Union of Catalonia. It was a hectic five years in the world of politics. Unió had a deputy in the Courts of Madrid, Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera, and a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia, Pau Romeva.
At the beginning of August 1936, Roca i Caball, as an element that came from traditionalism, was arrested, but he was soon released. Faced with the dangerous situation he had, he went to France.
In Paris, with a whole series of Catalan, Basque, Spanish and also French intellectuals, where names such as Maritain, Madariaga and Mounier stood out, he organized the Committees for Civil Peace in Spain, which caused a lot of trouble towards the Franco regime and they also devoted themselves to saving people persecuted by the Nazis.
Arrested by the Germans, a Wehrmacht (German army) officer who spoke Catalan and knew him saved his life. On his return to the country, after a period of exile outside Catalonia, he was able to settle permanently in Barcelona. He died on August 23, 1976. It should also be said that Roca i Caball is the father of the politician and lawyer Miquel Roca i Junyent.
As the monk and historian Hilari Reguer stated in several publications: "Someone should write the full biography he deserves".
