The ERC diary

Journalistic independence has always been difficult. Information is power. What power does not want to influence the media, who does not want to condition them, who does not want to control them? Not allowing oneself to be influenced, conditioned, and controlled is part of the essence of the profession since journalism is journalism. This does not prevent each publication from having a positioning or editorial line, a background ideology from which it looks at, explains, and interprets facts, reality.

In the first third of the 20th century, the dividing line between the press and politics was very thin. Distances were not kept. Jaume Guillamet, one of the great scholars of that press, has now dedicated a monograph, published by the Josep Irla Foundation, to the case of The Opinion (1931-1934), one of the interesting newspapers of the ephemeral republican era, years of great renewal and impulse of the press in the Catalan language. He defines it as "the newspaper of the republican revolution", defender of a socialism compatible with liberalism.

Before becoming a daily newspaper, it had been a weekly publication (1928-1931) where Josep Pla initially wrote before making the ideological leap and entering Cambó's service. The Opinion weekly was key in the impulse for the creation of ERC. Shortly after the party's birth, it became a daily newspaper. Despite lasting only three years and four months, it became the most widely circulated in the Catalan language and the third among the twenty-eight newspapers then published in Barcelona. Yes: twenty-eight paper newspapers! Its success, moreover, occurred despite the fact that in the same year, 1931, a direct rival already emerged, Humanity, also affiliated with an ERC in permanent ebullition, a headline – the latter – personally driven by Lluís Companys.

La Vanguardia (monarchist right) and The flood (left-wing republican), both in Spanish, led sales. The Opinion was disputed primacy in Catalan with Advertising, intellectual reference newspaper linked to the party of intellectuals, Acció Catalana, and it went ahead of the veteran The Voice of Catalonia, La Lliga's newspaper. The average circulation of The Opinion should have been placed between 55,000 and 65,000 copies. From the environment of Advertising, historical newspaper that in 1922 had been Catalanized, in 1929 the prestigious cultural weekly " was also created.Viewpoint.The owner of L’Opinió was Joan Casanelles, elected councilor for ERC in Barcelona in April 1931. Casanelles never wanted to cede ownership to the party, which led to strong tensions. The first director of L’Opinió was Antoni Xirau. The head of editorial from the start, Joan Alavedra (who would end up being private secretary to President Francesc Macià), and as editorial secretary, the young Andreu-Avel·lí Artís, the future Sempronio. Xirau, elected deputy to the Cortes, very soon ceded his place to Joaquim Ventalló, who had been editorial secretary at La Publicitat. Years later, Ventalló would be the translator into Catalan of Tintin.L’Opinió, went beyond political combat, wanting to do journalism with young writers like Irene Polo, who stood out for her human-interest interviews and on-the-ground reports, for example, the coverage of the mining conflict in the Llobregat and Cardener basin: she went down to the mine to talk to the strikers. Among the female names were also Rosa Maria Arquimbau and Aurora Bertrana. Francesc Madrid was the delegate in Madrid. Domènec de Bellmunt wrote the Parliament chronicles. Josep M. Lladó, who had worked for La Veu de Catalunya and La Publicitat, was one of the pillars of the newsroom. Once L'Opinió closed, he ended up going to La Vanguardia.Tourism, education, agrarian reform, the economy, unemployment, Barça, and culture pages (for example with Sebastià Gasch writing about cinema) were recurring themes. The interests haven't changed that much, have they? In the summer of 1933, the peak of the newspaper, Felip Grau Ros sent reports from the East and Aurora Bertrana from the Caribbean; Vicenç Riera and Artur Perucho denounced cocaine and drug trafficking and the facilities that criminality found in Barcelona; and Polo went to Andorra to narrate the entry of the French Gendarmerie into the Pyrenean Principality at the request of the Bishopric of Urgell on the eve of elections. Furthermore, the newspaper denounced the anti-democratic hesitations of the Estat Català sector, supported by Macià from the Presidency. This critical stance would eventually have political consequences with the expulsion from the government and the party of the leaders of the Grup de L’Opinió: Joan Lluhí i Vallescà, Pere Comas, Antoni Xirau i Josep Tarradellas, and also Casanelles. Ventalló, the director, resigned from ERC. Then they created the new Republican Nationalist Party of the Left. The newspaper suffered a readership crisis. With Macià's death, this sector returned to the ERC government.

What else can be highlighted about L’Opinió? Ideologically, the criticism of FAI terrorism. In the technical field, the progressive introduction of photography and the pool of cartoonists: Helios Gómez, Quelus, Tísner, Opisso, Siau... Its life, however, was ephemeral. Closed down with the October Events of 1934, and its political leaders imprisoned, it never came out again.