Josep Maria Trias de Bes dies, the politician who went from Pujol's CiU to Aznar's PP

BarcelonaJosep Maria Trias de Bes i Serra, a politician with a long career in Catalonia, passed away this Thursday at the age of 81 and the farewell ceremony will take place this Saturday at the Sant Gervasi Funeral Home (Barcelona). An anti-Franco militant—he was part of the PSUC and participated in the 'Caputxinada' of 1966—he built his political career first in the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and, later, in the People's Party (PP). With the party led by Jordi Pujol, Trias de Bes was a member of the Congress of Deputies from 1980 to 1993 and even became vice president of the Spanish Lower House, when CiU was relevant to maintaining the PSOE's majority at the Moncloa.

At odds with Pujol because he was among those who thought that CiU's involvement in Spain's governance should mean being part of the Spanish government, Trias de Bes left the nationalist federation in 1995, after a brief stint on the Board of Directors of RTVE. In the 1996 general elections, he made the move to the PP, heading the popular candidacy in Catalonia. With the arrival of the PP to the state executive, he held the position of executive president of Transmediterránea until 1999.

A defender of the 'yes' vote for the Statute of Catalonia, despite the opposition of the PP, the lawyer Trias de Bes gradually moved away from the political front line, although a few years later, in 2009, he decided to intellectually join the project promoted by Rosa Díez, Unión, Pueblo y Democracia, highlighting the importance he placed on coordination between the State's autonomous regions, proposing to further standardize the content of educational plans or healthcare management, as he wrote in an article in El Mundo.

Coming from a renowned family, his father was a diplomat—which is why he was born in Madrid—and his grandfather, Josep Maria Trias de Bes i Giró, was a leader of the Lliga Regionalista of Francesc Cambó and a deputy of the Second Republic.