Josep Irla i Bosch

Josep Irla i Bosch ( born October 24, 1876 in Sant Feliu de Baix Emporda Guíxol in the comarca, province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain, † September 19, 1958 in Saint- Raphaël, Var, France) was a Catalan politician.

Life

Irla i Bosch was the child of a family of innkeepers and the oldest of three brothers. He was the founder of a company for the processing of cork. He represented federalist and republican ideas later and founded in his hometown federalist newspaper El Programa. In 1908 he became mayor of Sant Feliu de Guíxol and 1911 deputy in the Provincial Parliament from Girona and as such also a member of the Assembly of Mancomunitat de Catalunya, the Parliament of the provinces that formed the Commonwealth of Catalonia.

With the start of the Spanish Republic in 1931 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1932 and deputy of the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya ( ERC), the Republican Left of Catalonia, the Parliament of Catalonia. In subsequent years, he held various positions in Parliament and in the provincial government of Girona. In 1938 he was until the end of the Civil War, the last President of the Parliament of Catalonia, even after the escape in the French exile in 1939.

Exile

After the kidnapping and extradition of the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya Lluís Companys i Jover whose extradition by the Gestapo at the Franco regime and subsequent shooting in Barcelona in October of 1940 was Irla i Bosch the 124th President of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In the years 1945 to 1948, he formed a government in exile in Catalonia in exile. He remained the President of the Generalitat to 1954 and handed the office to his colleague Josep Tarradellas i Joan. He died in 1958 in Saint- Raphaël in Provence.

Aftermath

The mortal remains of Irla i Bosch in 1981 buried with an act of public ceremony in his hometown. An existing Fundació Josep Irla in Barcelona awards in his memory one is endowed with 6000 Euro Price Premi d' assaig breu Irla for works that deal with the political, economic, social and cultural realities in the Catalan-speaking territories.

Publications

• Jordi Gaitx Moltó (ed.): Memories d'un president a l' Exili. Josep Irla i Bosch, with a foreword by Josep Maria Roig Rosich. Viena, Barcelona 2010, ISBN 978-84-83305843.