1 Novembre de 1920, Font La Vanguardia.

Suport del CADCI als patriotes irlandesos

In the wake of that Easter Rising, Terence MacSwiney - a leader of the Irish Republican Army in Cork - was arrested and transferred to a prison in Britain, where he married his fiancée and comrade-in-struggle, Muriel. Following his release, MacSwiney was elected a Member of the Irish Parliament - Dáil Éireann - in the 1918 General Election, and he was also elected Lord Mayor of Cork in 1920.

Detenido de nuevo y traslado a un cárcel en Londres, MacSwiney luchó por su propia libertad y por la libertad de su patria con una huelga de hambre. Se murió después de 74 días, el 25 de octubre de 1920, pero durante esos meses se mostraba la solidaridad más profunda con su lucha en este país de Catalunya.

Arrested yet again and transferred to a London jail, MacSwiney fought for his own liberty and that of his country by means of a hunger strike. He died after 74 days - on October 25th, 1920 - but during those months the most profound solidarity with his struggle was to be demonstrated here in Catalunya.

El sindicato catalán CADCI dijo sobre MacSwiney en su periódico L’Acció :

“Aquest home excepcional, que d’ençá del seu empresonament ratifica, dia darrera dia, la seva voluntat indomenyable de sacrificar la vida per la seva concepció de la Pàtria”.

The Catalan trade union organisation CADCI wrote of MacSwiney in its journal L’Acció (Pardon my poor pronunciation of Catalan):   “This remarkable man, who from his prison cell displays, day after day, his unbending will to sacrifice his life on behalf of his ideal of nationhood”.

El 1 de noviembre de 1920, Dia de Tots Sants, CADCI comemeró a MacSwiney con una grande manifestación en Barcelona y, según a L’Acció :

“El poeta Ventura Gassol va llegir magnificament una bellísima poesia original exhaltant la gesta sublim de l’alcalde de Cork, prodüint en el concurs una forta emoció.”

On November 1st, 1920, All Saints’ Day, CADCI commemorated MacSwiney with a mass demonstration in Barcelona and, as L’Acció reported:

“The poet Ventura Gassol gave a magnificent reading of a most beautiful original poem exalting the towering deed of the Lord Mayor of Cork, producing among those present a deep emotion.”

Based on the Catalonian folksong Lerida Prison, here is a short extract in Catalan from Gassol’s 1920 poem of internationalist solidarity with Terence MacSwiney (“germá nostre”, “our brother”). [The poet speaks of how MacSwiney, his pale face frozen in the perspiration of death, has forced an opening through the walls of the great prison in which the heart of Ireland is overshadowed, and of how the spirit of MacSwiney has also inspired the people of Catalunya to open out from their own imprisonment.

Fundado en la canción popular catalana La Presó de Lleida, aquí tenemos en catalá un fragmento pequeño de los versos de solidaridad internacionalista que Gassol escribió:

 Al cor ombrós d’Irlanda