President Salvador Illa launched the Tarradellas Year in Barcelona on Monday, opening a programme of public events that will run until October 2027, 50 years after Josep Tarradellas returned to Catalonia from exile and the Generalitat was restored.

For residents, the programme includes an October event at Tarradellas’s grave in Cervelló, round-table discussions in five cities from November, and a major exhibition at Barcelona’s Palau Robert next February. Illa used the launch to call for the inclusive approach he associates with Tarradellas, citing the rise of the far right.

“Fifty years later, we are living through a moment of refoundation,” Illa said, urging at least Catalanist political forces to reach greater agreement.

The Generalitat is Catalonia’s self-government institution. Illa said his administration seeks the greatest possible level of self-government, exercised with responsibility and rigour.

Events planned across Catalonia and beyond

The Generalitat’s programme is intended to introduce Tarradellas, who led the institution in exile and became its first president after restoration following the Franco dictatorship, to a wider public. Historian Joan Esculies is the commissioner for the Tarradellas Year.

  • October 2026: Tarradellas’s grave in Cervelló, in the Barcelona province, is scheduled to be formally improved and identified as a place of remembrance.
  • From November 2026: round-table discussions are planned in Girona, Manresa, Lleida, Tarragona and Tortosa.
  • February 2027: Palau Robert in Barcelona is due to open Citizens of Catalonia: Tarradellas’s Return and the Thread of Self-Government, 1977–2027, an exhibition later set to travel in adapted form to other parts of Catalonia.
  • May 2027: a conference is planned in Madrid on how Tarradellas’s return and the recovery of Catalan self-government were viewed across Spain.

The programme also includes a collective book on 1976 and 1977, work to promote the Montserrat Tarradellas i Macià Archive, and a comic aimed mainly at children.

Tarradellas’s role in restoring the Generalitat

According to the Generalitat’s official history, Tarradellas was elected president of the Generalitat in exile in 1954. He lived in France and was recognised by Catalan political forces as preserving the institution’s legal continuity.

After Spain’s first democratic elections in 1977, then prime minister Adolfo Suárez recognised Tarradellas’s historical legitimacy. The two negotiated the formal re-establishment of the Generalitat after Tarradellas was summoned to Madrid on 28 June 1977.

Residents can expect the first local commemoration in Cervelló in October, followed by the discussion series from November in Girona, Manresa, Lleida, Tarragona and Tortosa.

Primary sources: eb.gencat.cat, govern.cat, patrimoni.gencat.cat. Reported by en.ara.cat, 20minutos.es, qoshe.com, bonart.cat, vilaweb.cat, elnacional.cat, lavanguardia.com, Diari ARA.