Cambó, Francesc, 1876-1947
(Updated 08/10/2024)
Francesc Cambó i Batlle (Verges, 1876-Buenos Aires, 1947). Politician, lawyer, financier, collector and patron. He graduated in Humanities and Law at Barcelona, where he became a member of the Centre Escolar Catalanista, an organization linked to the Lliga de Catalunya (League of Catalonia), of which he was president in 1895. With Prat de la Riba and Verdaguer i Callís, he founded the Centre Nacional Català (Catalan National Centre) which later combined with the Partido Regionalista (Regionalist Party) to become the Lliga Regionalista (Regionalist League). Among other positions, he was a councillor in Barcelona, a member of the Spanish parliament for Barcelona and a minister in two Spanish governments. He spent the Civil War abroad in Paris, Switzerland, USA and Argentina, where he died in 1947.
His work as patron included founding the Fundació Bernat Metge, the Fundació Bíblica Catalana and the Fundació Cambó in Paris, and financing works such as Ferran Soldevila's Història de Catalunya and Pompeu Fabra's Diccionari general de la llengua catalana. He gave part of his collection of paintings to the city of Barcelona, today the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (National Art Museum of Catalonia).
His written work includes numerous books and newspaper articles. He contributed to La veu de Catalunya , where he became the head of the Foreign Policy section. Some of his texts on current political issues of the time include Actuació regionalista (1915), Entorn del feixisme italià (1924) and España, Cataluña y la Nueva Constitución (1929). Almost all of his written work can be found in the eight volumes published by Alpha, containing his memoirs, articles, speeches, conferences, etc.
Cambó collection at the Centre for Catalan Studies at Paris Sorbonne University
