Vicenç Albert Ballester, the captain to whom the creation of the estelada is attributed

BarcelonaBefore lending his name to squares and streets, Vicenç Albert Ballester was a captain in the Merchant Navy. The profession led him to live for some years in Cuba, from where he returned in 1898, the year in which the Spanish colonial project collapsed with the independence of the island. That turn marked his political course: "From very early on, he associated with the nascent sectors of Catalan independentism," explains historian and co-author of Ballester's biography, Fermí Rubiralta.

Framed among the "intransigent" Catalans –opposed to the "transigents" of the Regionalist League–, Rubiralta describes him as an activist committed to the "renationalization" of the country. He created and maintained the Mossèn Cinto Catalan Schools (1904), a model of free education in Catalan, and promoted the pioneering publication of the children's magazine En Patufet.

Regarding propaganda, he edited and directed titles such as La Tralla –the 1905 special issue on the independence of Cuba ended up being seized–, Renaixementand La Tronada, and he even proposed an alternative anthem to Els Segadors that did not succeed. Linked to the events of September 11, 1901, when the police arrested thirty Catalanists, he promoted the anti-repressive movement with La Reixa and the Catalan Charity Association.

Popularization of the estelada

A militant of the Catalan Union, he eventually became its president. From this position and together with Oliver i Domènech, he promoted the Pro Catalonia Committee in 1918, in the middle of the First World War, to assert the Catalan cause in the redrawing of the map of Europe. The committee is credited with the definitive popularization of the estelada flag, but the symbol had already been circulating before: on September 11, 1915, the Catalan Union had delivered one—the first on record, according to Rubiralta—to three Catalan volunteers fighting on the Allied side.

For Ballester, the function of each symbol was quite different. According to Rubiralta, he was "very clear" that the proper flag of Catalonia was the senyera, and that the estelada was to be a "combat" flag, provisional, until sovereignty was achieved. He illustrates this with a 1918 committee document: "The English and French versions feature the estelada and the Catalan version features the senyera".

Ballester remained linked to the independence cause until the end: in the twenties with Estat Català and in the thirties with Nosaltres Sols!, until he died in 1938. That same year, the mayor of Barcelona, Hilari Salvador, had already approved dedicating a square or street to him, a recognition that the Civil War and Francoism left in suspense. Public vindication did not resume until the 2000s—the first tribute was in 2009—, driven mainly by the Reeixida Foundation.