The "wise organizer" of Catalan cultural heritage dies

There was a time, we could say foundational, when cultural policy mattered a lot in Catalonia. Despite having little money, as always. It was a battlefield and a showcase. It generated passions and citizen controversies. It was necessary to build the country that Franco's regime had erased. It was time to resume the work of the Mancomunitat and the Republican Generalitat: libraries, museums, archives, theaters... Pujolism put its national stamp on that process.

Figures like Oriol Bohigas and Ferran Mascarell—from Barcelona City Council—and the now deceased Eduard Carbonell were key in the institutional design of "stone" culture: of institutions. Carbonell was in all its glory for many years. He didn't have the public profile of Bohigas or Mascarell, but using the Prat de la Riba analogy, he was the "seny computer" (we can translate it as the "wise computer") from the Catalan government. Pujol's key man.

Carbonell modeled a lot of stone behind the scenes until he obtained a coveted personal prize: the direction of the MNAC, where he took over from Xavier Barral, another key name of those years. Scholar and politician, he had the honor of successfully completing the most important museum in the country.