El Pressupost extraordinari de Cultura de 1908: entre solidaritat municipal i Solidaritat Catalana

Abstract

In the first decade of the 20th century, the Barcelona City Council, ruled by republicans and regionalists, wanted to change the educational system applied in the city and towards 1907 prepared a plan known as Extraordinary Culture Budget, passed in 1908 with a vast majority of votes. This plan was later frustrated by governmental policy and was the subject of a long ideological battle in different environments, such as culture in general but most of all in education, language, religion and politics, in Barcelona as well as all over Catalonia. The result was the fracture of Solidaritat Catalana.
At the same time, it called forth the democratic election of the mayor of Barcelona in the person of the republican and catalanist Albert Bastardas, known as the popularmayor. The budget was a catalanist program, progressive and democratic, and its proposal was that the municipal schools of new creation applied modern criteria such as teaching done in Catalan, classes for boys and girls together, religious neutrality and free of cost.
It was not possible to carry through this program until the 2nd Spanish Republic and the Catholic Church used it to campaign against the republicans and nationalists that supported the initiative. The City Council forced the resignation of the Mayor by royal appointment (that is to say, non-democratic) and the election of Albert Bastardas.
That program propitiated the historical division of catalanism and the Solidaritat Catalana movement. It proved that the unitarian action of catalanism was a political utopia.