Enric Prat de la Riba

Enric Prat de la Riba i Sarrà (29 November 1870 – 1 August 1917) was a Catalan politician, lawyer and writer. He was a member of the Centre Escolar Catalanista, where one of the earliest definitions of Catalan nationalism was formulated. He became the first President of the Commonwealth of Catalonia on 6 April 1914 and retained this office until his death. He wrote the book and political manifesto La nacionalitat catalana in which greater autonomy to Catalonia was advocated. He died in 1917 and is interred in the Montjuïc Cemetery in Barcelona.

Early life
Enric Prat de la Riba i Sarrà was born on 29 November 1870 in Castellterçol, to an affluent Roman Catholic conservative family. He started his law studies at the University of Barcelona and finished and received his degree at the Central University of Madrid.

Political career
Prat de la Riba was attracted towards Catalan nationalism when he was still in college. In 1887, he became a member of Centre Escolar Catalanista. He became an important member of the cultural and political organization Unió Catalanista, in which he wrote some of its most relevant manifestos, among them is the famous Missatge al Rei dels Hel·lens in 1897. In 1891, he was elected the secretary of Unió. He penned Catalan nationalist writings such as Compendi de la doctrina catalanista and Compendi de la història de Catalunya. He also wrote for the periodical La Renaixença. Since 1899, he promoted Catalan nationalism in politics, at first as a member of the Centre Nacional Català and later in the Regionalist League of Catalonia. The Regionalist League was a right-wing Catalan political party established in 1901 by Prat de la Riba. The party demanded greater administrative autonomy to Catalonia.

Prat de la Riba served as a secretary of the assembly in charge of writing the draft for a regional constitution known as Bases de Manresa in 1892, the first step towards the development of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy. He is also known as the author of the Noucentista Catalan nationalist manifesto La nacionalitat catalana in 1906.

Later on, in 1907 he became the first president of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans, president of the Diputació de Barcelona and a proponent of the Commonwealth of Catalonia, which he led until his death on 6 April 1914, having served as its first President of the Commonwealth.