On this day, 216 years ago, a Girona, greatly weakened by months of siege by Napoleon's troops, managed to repel yet another attack by the French army. It was September 19, 1809, and that day would be celebrated until the Franco regime as the Great Day of Girona, on which absolutism managed to defeat an army of republican values. Only a few voices, such as that of the Girona-born writer and journalist Prudenci Bertrana, would dare to question the official story, which led to public rejection, arrest, and having to move to Barcelona.