Figures

Biography

Moià (1660) - Sant Boi de Llobregat (1743)

The son of a rural landowner who was a former mayor of Moià, he studied law in Barcelona and established himself there to practise it. In 1696 he married the widow Maria Bosch i Barba, daughter of a well-off family from Sant Boi de Llobregat, with whom he had four children.

When the Austrian side triumphed in the Barcelona of early 1706, he was appointed third minister, after the death of his predecessor. After the defeat of the Bourbon troops besieging Barcelona, Archduke Charles rewarded him by naming him an honoured citizen, which meant he could attend the sessions of the Braç Reial, one of the three estates of the Catalan parliament, and the last joint meeting of the three estates, held in summer 1713, which decided on the city's last-ditch resistance.

Casanova was also one of the five members of the secret committee that had to assess the proposals of the military leader, Antonio de Villarroel. Six months later he reached his political highpoint, when the Consell de Cent (Barcelona city council) appointed him the city's councillor in chief, replacing Manuel Flix, who was in favour of surrendering the city. This made him the highest authority over the famous citizen's militia formed by the guilds, known as the Coronela.

At the end of August 1714 the city authorities ignored his suggestion of accepting a temporary armistice in order to reorganise the troops while they awaited an allied convoy from Majorca. Although his proposal was rejected, Casanova maintained a courageous attitude during the last days of the siege and, on 11 September, waving the banner of Saint Eulàlia and escorted by city leaders, he led the final counterattack on the Jonqueres bank. There he was injured in the thigh and transferred to the college of La Mercè. At three in the afternoon, Colonel Pau Thoar, following the opinion of the commander, General Antonio de Villarroel, called for a parley and talks began on surrendering to the Duke of Berwick. Casanova did not reappear in public until 1719, when he took advantage of an amnesty to begin practising law again. He later returned to Sant Boi, where he died in his eighties.

Commemorations and tributes

In 1863, Víctor Balaguer dedicated a street in the new Eixample of the Cerdà Plan, running alongside Carrer de Villarroel, to the memory of Rafael Casanova. In 1888, Barcelona City Council put up a statue in honour of Casanova, which was placed on public display for the Universal Exhibition. The statue stood in Passeig de Sant Joan, in front of the Arc de Triomf.

A year later, in 1889, the statue was the final meeting point for a demonstration called by the Lliga de Catalunya in protest at the promulgation in Madrid of the reform of the Spanish Civil Code. Since the National Day of 1901, the tradition of paying tribute to Casanova's memory with bouquets of flowers and laurel branches in front of the statue has been reaffirmed.

On the National Day, 11 September, 1914, the statue was transferred to Ronda de Sant Pere, near the place where he personally led the counterattack against the Bourbon troops in 1714. The statue remained in the same place during the military dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, despite a ban on tributes there, and during the Second Republic, when the ceremonies to remember Casanova became official, until it was removed by Franco in 1939. In 1977 it was restored to its place and it receives a floral offering every 11 September.

Other tributes to Casanova are:

• In 1913, Sant Boi de Llobregat Town Council renamed the former "Rambla de Maluquer" as "Rambla de Casanova" in tribute to the Catalan politician.
• In 1914, Moià Town Council dedicated a street to Casanova in the place where the Casanova family home stands, and also put up a statue in his honour. This monument was removed in June 1939, with the entry of the Francoist troops. In 1977, the name Rafael Casanova was restored to the same street and in 1978 a new statue was put up.
• In 1922 the government of Catalonia, then known as the Mancomunitat, installed a commemorative slab over the tomb where the remains of Rafael Casanova i Comes are preserved in Sant Boi de Llobregat.

Biography

Barcelona (1656) - La Corunya (1726)

The son of a well-off professional soldier from Galicia, Antonio de Villarroel y Peláez was born in Barcelona for circumstantial reasons and ended up defending it against the French. He began the war as a general in the Bourbon armies, under the orders of the Duke of Orleans. But in 1710 Villarroel took advantage of the occupation of Madrid by the Austrian troops and the flight of Philip V to present himself before the Archduke Charles and place himself at his service. When Charles III's troops had to leave Madrid and retreat once again towards Catalonia, he was partly in charge of the evacuation of Aragon, where he was taken prisoner together with his men, although shortly afterwards he was freed in a prisoner exchange. After a year requesting a return to active service, he was appointed Inspector General of the Imperial Infantry, although only for a short time, as, at the beginning of the summer of 1713, the Austrian forces abandoned Catalonia after agreeing their withdrawal with the Bourbon army.

When the siege of Barcelona began, he was appointed general commanding the Catalan forces and was therefore responsible for the defence of the city. On 12 August 1714, the Bourbons attempted to storm the city in a combat known as the Battle of the Bastion of Santa Clara. Despite the success of the defenders, who managed to repel them, the many breaches in the wall and the imperfection of the defences were made clear.

On 1 September 1714, after a false alarm of a general assault by the Bourbon army, Villarroel called a secret council of war at his house to discuss whether the city should surrender. The soldiers' conclusion was that it would not withstand an assault. On 4 September 1714 the besieging commander, the Duke of Berwick, proposed negotiating the surrender of the city, but the civil authorities of Barcelona were opposed to doing so. Antonio de Villarroel refused to pass on their reply and presented his resignation.

Despite this, during the final assault on 11 September, he opted to remain alongside the Catalan troops he had led up to that point. He was wounded in the attack against the Pla d'en Llull and, when he was told that Rafael Casanova had also been wounded, he gave the order to surrender. The Bourbon troops captured him, together with twenty-five other military leaders, breaching the guarantees given in the surrender. Antonio de Villarroel and his colleagues were moved to Alicante castle, where he arrived on 29 October 1714. The following month he was sent to La Coruña prison, where he remained for ten years. He was released in connection with the Peace Treaty of Vienna of 1725, but his health was so delicate that he died shortly afterwards, on 22 February 1726.

Tributes

General Villarroel has had a street in his honour in the Barcelona Eixample since 1863, as part of what was known as the Cerdà Plan, drawn up by Ildefons Cerdà. Víctor Balaguer was in charge of naming the streets with the ideological charge of the romantic nationalism of the time. The streets have the names of the institutions of the old Crown of Aragon (Diputació, Consell de Cent, Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes...), the territories that made it up (Aragó, València, Rosselló, Mallorca...), and those running down from the hills to the sea are named after characters who consolidated the historical vision of the Renaixença movement of renewed Catalan nationalism: Balmes, Aribau, Pau Claris, Rocafort, Urgell, Casanova, Villarroel...