Lluís Maria Xirinacs

Lluís Maria Xirinacs i Damian ( born August 6, 1932 in Barcelona, † 11 August, 2007 Ogassa, Ripollès ) was a Catalan Senator, priests and independence activist.

Biography

1955 Xirinacs became a priest. At 34, he started against the connections between church and state to fight. In the sixties, at times of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975) in Spain, he took the initiative to establish a " meeting of Catalonia " ( Assamblea de Catalunya) under application of hunger strikes. Subsequently, he was convicted in 1972 and in 1974 and 1975 to prison. From 1975 he has pioneered various initiatives Catalan. After holding for over a year and nine months, twelve hours a day a demonstrative stand guard outside the prison "Model " in Barcelona, ​​an amnesty law for Catalan prisoner was enforced. For his political career and his pacifist actions for the defense of the independence of Catalonia from Spain, he received much recognition.

With a majority of more than half a million votes, he became senator in 1977 for Barcelona. In this and the following year he approached the revolutionary Catalan independence movement. In 1980, he directs the candidacy for the " Left Bloc of National Liberation " ( BEAN) to the first elections of the Catalan Parliament since the Franco regime.

From 1980 Xirinacs left active politics, to work on his political topic.

In 1990, he left his priesthood without losing his Christian faith and its roots, according to the decades-long dispute between his path and that of the official Catholic Church. In 1997, he became a doctor of philosophy. In order to promote the independence of the Catalan Countries, he stepped on the town hall square of Barcelona, Plaça Sant Jaume, in a hunger strike.

In 2004 he became the national Court of Spain for a speech on 11 September 2002, in which he as a friend of ETA and Batasuna known ( to express his understanding of their political backgrounds), sentenced to two years in prison. For health reasons, he was released early.

Death

On August 11, 2007 took to his body in a wooded area near Ripollès. Xirinacs chose to commit suicide and wanted to spend his last days " in his loneliness and silence ."

He left a will ( dated 6 August 2007), in which he describes his death as an "act of sovereignty", in which he remembered to have lived 75 years in the occupied, oppressed Catalan countries ( occupied by the Spanish, French and Italian states ). He further alleges that the Catalan political leadership cowardice in terms of the Catalan nationalism.

Testament

Testament in English translation

ACT OF Sovereignty

Lluís M. Xirinacs i Damian Barcelona, ​​August 6, 2007

Testament in Catalan language:

ACTE DE SOBIRANIA

Lluís M. Xirinacs i Damian Barcelona, 6 d' agost de 2007

Source: Centre d' Estudis Joan Bardina