Catalonian empathy with former Cork Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney

Catalonia’s intense interest in the 1920 hunger strike and death of Cork’s lord mayor will be the subject of a seminar in the city next week.

The Catalan solidarity movement with MacSwiney, who died in Brixton Prison, London, after 74 days on hunger strike, will be one of the main topics. The event takes place on Wednesday, June 10, at Cork City Hall, on the site of the city hall where MacSwiney was arrested in August 1920 but which was destroyed by British forces that December.

The seminar will feature talks on the history of Irish-Catalan relations, and academics from both countries will be among the speakers, as will MacSwiney’s grandson Cathal MacSwiney Brugha, emeritus professor in business analytics at University College Dublin.

John Borgonovo, a post-doctoral researcher at University College Cork, said the MacSwiney hunger strike was an event of major international importance.

“There was press interest all over the world, but it spoke especially to people in ongoing separatist struggles of their own, and the Catalans were one such people,” he said. “The Catalans felt sympathy with the Irish independence movement, public meetings were held, and messages of condolence were sent after MacSwiney’s death.”

The seminar is being run by UCC’s school of history and its department of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American studies and the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia.

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