After months of work, the Pasqual Maragall Digital Archive was published this week, the result of the initiative of the Llegat Pasqual Maragall program of the Catalunya Europa Foundation. The digitalization of the Archive has been carried out by Fidel Bellmunt, responsible for the Pasqual Maragall Documentary Fund. This Digital Archive, which already contains more than 1,400 documents, wants to participate in civic and collective memory and contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of the life and work of Maragall, facilitating the search and consultation of the documentation generated around its varied and extensive activity.
The original documents of this file are deposited in the corresponding archives, mainly the National Archives of Catalonia and the Municipal Archives of Barcelona. In this sense, the documentation available today is mostly public, but the project aims to publish all possible documentation. It is, therefore, an open and ongoing project, with the purpose of expanding its fund.
The presentation of the archive brought together Joan Manuel Tresserras, Joaquim Nadal and Joan Herrera, representatives, at that time, of the three parties that formed the first left-wing understanding government that Pasqual Maragall led. The three politicians were protagonists of the debate "Agree or confront? Experiences of democratic politics" moderated by Milagros Pérez-Oliva. Nadal, Tresserras and Herrera reviewed the successes and mistakes of the two coalition governments, with an eye on a possible agreement between leftist parties to the Spanish executive.
The three speakers agreed to make a positive assessment of the two governments of understanding. Joaquim Nadal, in particular, defended that "history will do justice to the governments of progress." Herrera, more critical, considered that it was a mistake to make too many watertight compartments in the executive, which caused a lack of cohesion. Unlike what one could think at the time, Herrera said, when one of the three partners eroded, the other two also suffered wear.
The Statute was one of the other topics of debate. Nadal said that "the Statute was not what Maragall would have wanted." According to Nadal, Maragall would have wanted a short text and not a text of more than 300 articles and much more regulatory than what the former president said would have been desirable. Tresserras, replied that in part it ended up being like that to protect many competences that would otherwise have been left unprotected.
Press:
- "Un arxiu digital recull més de 1.400 documents sobre el llegat de Pasqual Maragall". Betevé. December 16th 2019
- "El llegat de Pasqual Maragall". La Vanguardia. Silvia Hinojosa. December 16th 2019
- "El llegat de Pasqual Maragall o com aprendre a governar en coalició". Nació Digital. Pep Martí. December 16th 2019
- "Pasqual Maragall y el espíritu del tripartito". El Periódico. Roger Pascual. December 16th 2019
- Entrevista a Fidel Bellmunt al Catalunya Nit. Catalunya Ràdio. December 17th 2019 (From minute 36)
