Macià, Francesc

Macià, Francesc

(fränsāsk` məsēä`), 1859–1933, Spanish politician, Catalan nationalist leader. An army officer, he joined the separatist movement in CataloniaCatalonia
, Catalan Catalunya, Span. Cataluña, autonomous community (1990 pop. 6,165,638), NE Spain, stretching from the Pyrenees at the French border southward along the Mediterranean Sea.
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 and was elected to the Cortes in 1907. Exiled briefly in 1917 for political activism, he returned to found (by 1922) the Catalan nationalist movement, Estat Català. He was exiled again in 1924. From Paris he directed an ineffective movement to establish a Catalan republic, plotting unsuccessfully an invasion of Catalonia (1926). After the fall of Primo de RiveraPrimo de Rivera, José Antonio
, 1903–36, Spanish political leader, son of Miguel Primo de Rivera. Founder (1933) of the Falange, the Spanish fascist party, José Antonio was executed (Nov., 1936) by the Loyalists after the outbreak of the Spanish civil war.
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, he returned (1930) to Barcelona and became (1931) the first president of the Catalan republic. In 1932 he made an agreement with the central government at Madrid by which Catalonia was recognized as an autonomous region.