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Homage to Carles Rahola
Homenatge a Carles Rahola is a collective artistic proposal that is open to participation by the Girona Democratic Assembly of Artists. It involves a series of graphic interventions on a uniform support (white cardboard measuring 70 × 50 cm), which initially bore, printed in grey ink, an enlarged portrait of the person being honoured and the phrase ‘May the gallows never rise again in the august enclosure of noble, beloved Girona, nor anywhere else in the world,’ taken from Carles Rahola’s book La pena de mort a Girona (The Death Penalty in Girona), first published in 1934.
Carles Rahola i Llorens was born in Cadaqués in 1881, settling in the city of Girona, whose stones he knew and loved, from a very early age. Besides working for the Provincial Council and later for the Comisaría de la Generalitat, he collaborated with his brother Dàrius on the editorial board of El Autonomista.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Xavier Montsalvatge, Prudenci Bertrana, Miquel de Palol, Carles Rahola and other friends assumed the task of revitalising Girona’s dwindling cultural life. It was these circles that led to the magazine L’Enderroch and the Jocs Florals de Girona. It should not be forgotten that Carles Rahola was the president of the Ateneu Gironí (1922), which became the cultural centre of Girona during those years from the moment it was founded.
As a writer, he collaborated with more than fifty newspapers and magazines of his time. Notable among the thirty books and pamphlets he published are: Pequeños ensayos (1905), El llibre de l’August d’Alzina (1910), La dominació napoleònica a Girona (1922), En Ramon Muntaner. L’home, la crònica (1922), La ciutat de Girona (1929), Vides heroiques (1932), La pena de mort a Girona. Segles xviii i xix (1934), Xavier Montsalvatge. Assaig per a una biografia sentimental (1934), Breviari de ciutadania (1933) and Estudis napoleònics (1938).
A republican and Catalanist, his romantic, kind nature led him to an idealistic vision of the country and its future. An honest, upright man, he was sentenced to death by a military tribunal at the end of the war and shot on 15 May 1939.
