Frederic Culí i Verdaguer

Municipal lawyer, civil servant, and trainer of civil servants

The lawyer Frederic Culí Verdaguer (Sant Hilari Sacalm, 1890 – Barcelona, 1960), was a pioneer of Catalan municipalism and professor at the School of Civil Servants of the Mancomunitat. The School for Local Government Officials, created by the Barcelona Provincial Council in 1912 and promoted by the Mancomunitat from 1914, symbolizes one of the central aspects of Noucentista Catalanism: the creation of modern state structures. In 1924, the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera interrupted this experience, which was resumed in 1930. Frederic Culí was a professor and is one of the protagonists of the Mancomunitat period and what his government work meant.

Culí was born in Sant Hilari Sacalm in 1890, the fourth and last child of the marriage formed by Benet Culí, a landowner, and Mercè Verdaguer, from a family of lawyers from Santa Coloma de Farners. His older brother, Tomàs (1877-1961), heir to the estate, was mayor of Sant Hilari (1906-1911) and deputy of the League for the district of Santa Coloma (1917-1921). In 1909, he founded the Hispano Hilariense automobile company.

Frederic graduated in law in Barcelona in 1912 and received his doctorate in Madrid in 1915, with a thesis on provincial associations, when Catalonia began the experience of joint action by the provincial governments.

Culí entered the Barcelona City Council as a lawyer and worked through several sections and economic negotiations. He left the City Council in 1933, when Manuel Azaña appointed him as general director of Stamp and Monopoly, while he appointed Josep Irla, from Sant Feliu de Guíxols, as general director of Industry and Commerce. Azaña was a close friend of Culí and spent the summers in Sant Hilari in the 1930s.

In 1919, he published El municipi modern, and in the 1920s, he participated in several international congresses of cities and municipal governments. Since 1919, he had been an assistant professor at the School for Local Government Officials, where he taught classes on municipal and provincial law, as well as local organization and regime. After an initial interruption, the center’s activities resumed in 1930, and Culí became a full professor, secretary, and, in 1936, interim director.

Politically, he was active in the Catalan Union and later – although his brother was close to the League – he aligned himself with republicanism. In the 1930s, he joined Esquerra Republicana. He was also active in cultural associations and projects (the Association for the Protection of Catalan Education, correspondent for Alcover and Fabra…) and collaborated with nationalist newspapers. In Sant Hilari, he founded and promoted, along with Josep Ximeno, L’Estiuada, a long-running weekly (1908-1914). Very close to the administration, Culí secured benefits for Sant Hilari (Font Picant Road, Barcelona City Council school colonies), and in 1934, the City Council declared him a favorite son and dedicated a street to him. He also worked in favor of the “Fonts de Sacalm” school building, completed in the midst of the war (1937) and designed by Ricard Giralt Casadesús, with the pedagogical advances of the time, similar to other Giralt buildings inaugurated in Girona and Palau-Sacosta.

In 1939, shortly after the entry of Franco’s troops, he was dismissed in one of the many repressive actions. Culí, however, had moved to France with his family in October 1936 due to the violence. Like other democrats and liberals, he was caught between the military coup and the revolutionary outbreak.

With his wife and children, he moved to Savoy, specifically to the spa town of Aix-les-Bains, where his wife got a job as a violinist in a facility, and he worked as a night watchman in a hotel. In September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, they could no longer remain in France. He moved to Andorra, where he stayed for a couple of years, while his family moved back into their apartment in Barcelona. In Sant Hilari, however, Frederic Culí’s wife, Elsa Oriol, experienced the animosity of the new strongmen. The heir, Tomàs Culí, had gone to France at the beginning of the war, the family home and properties had been confiscated, and the local Falange had settled in the house. The family later recovered their assets.

Frederic returned to Barcelona in 1941 and, having been removed from his position at the City Council, had to earn a living outside the administration. He re-entered the Bar Association, of which he had been a member since 1914, and created the Mutual of Bus Companies of Catalonia, a sector to which he and his brother Tomàs had already been connected. In the 1950s, he regained a position as an official in the City Council, in his final years, as he passed away in Barcelona on April 27, 1960. The obituary note published in La Vanguardia the following day, April 28, was an exercise in vindicating his entire career:

“Illustrious Mr. Don Federico Culí Verdaguer, Doctor of Law, legal head of the Government Section of the Hon. Barcelona City Council, Officer of the Order of Academic Palms of the French Republic, founder and secretary of the Mutual of Bus Companies of Catalonia, counselor of the Municipal Funeral Service, former general director of the Stamp and Monopoly, Favorite Son of Sant Hilari Sacalm…”