When Josep Taradellas returned in October 1978, it was a huge event not only in Catalonia but across Spain. The former head of the Catalan government, in exile since 1939, Taradellas had refused to return until the Generalitat was re-established; now Adolfo Suárez, the president of the Spanish government overseeing the transition, contacted him and when he flew back he did so as the head of the provisional Generalitat, the embodiment of Catalonia’s ‘national’ survival and revival.
