Ricard Lobo Gil, who was a monk from Montserrat, and who participated in the creation of the Assemblea de Catalunya, in 1971, died on Saturday at the age of 88, according to reports. We buy and Efe has confirmed.
Lobo (Barcelona, 1936) served as secretary of the emblematic abbot of Montserrat Aureli Maria Escarré and between November 1978 and November 2005, for 27 years, and of the rules, provisions, agreements or notifications of Parliament, the Government and the administration of the Generalitat.
Assigned during the Transition to the Non-Aligned Group, along with other figures such as Josep Dalmau and Lluís Maria Xirinacs, he participated in the creation of the Assembly of Catalonia in 1971 and was arrested in 1973 in the so-called fall of the 113, in reference to the arrest of the Permanent Commission of the Assembly that affected 113 people. The Permanent Commission was meeting in the church of Santa Maria Mitjancera, in Barcelona, a temple next to the Modelo prison, where, however, Lobo was not imprisoned due to his status as a Benedictine ecclesiastic.
Lobo, who later, in 1974, would give up his habits and get married, had a solid intellectual background. Doctorate in Theology in Rome, he also graduated in Barcelona in Philosophy and Letters and Law. As a monk, he lived a monastic life in Montserrat and in Sant Miquel de Cuixà (France). With the return of President Josep Tarradellas from his exile, he appointed him the first director of the DOGC and .
In 1981 he joined the Call for Solidarity and that same year he was part of the founding core of the opinion and reflection group Club Arnau de Vilanova, and in 2011 he supported the creation of the ANC. Author of several works of narrative and essay, he also received the President Macià Medal (2005) and the Serra i Moret Prize for Civics (2007). Through his account on the social network X, various political leaders have praised Lobo’s career.
The former president of the Generalitat Pere Aragonès has assured that “he worked tirelessly for a fairer, stronger and freer country”, while the former president of the Parliament Laura Borràs has called him “an anti-Franco fighter, a good man and a man of the country”. The former general secretary of Junts Jordi Sánchez has also remembered him as a “reference of civic activism”.
