Enric Pérez Farràs was born in
Lleida, in 1884, the son of Enric Pérez i Dalmau and Teresa Farràs i Vila. He was married to Elisabet Coëmans. In
1930 he was the artillery commander of the
Spanish Army, he opposed to the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, due to the confrontation between the artillery corps and the dictator. He participated in clandestine meetings of officers against the monarchy of
Alfonso XIII. In 1931, following the proclamation of the
Second Spanish Republic, the president of the
Generalitat de Catalunya,
Francesc Macià, appointed him head of the
Mossos d'Esquadra. He was a sympathizer of
Catalan nationalism. During the insurrection of the Generalitat in
Revolution of 1934, he seconded the proclamation of
Lluís Companys and participated in the defense of the
Palace of the Generalitat of Catalonia against the troops of
Domingo Batet. For this Pérez Farràs was tried in a court martial and sentenced to death along with other officers such as
Federic Escofet i Alsina, but the sentence was commuted by the President of the Republic
Alcalá Zamora for perpetual imprisonment. The victory of the
Popular Front in the
1936 Spanish general election caused him to be pardoned and released, being readmitted to the army. With the Generalitat restored, he regained his position at the head of the Mossos and was one of the officers who contributed to quelling the
July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona, when he directed the attack on the headquarters of the Captaincy General of Catalunya and arrested
Manuel Goded, leader of the military rebellion in
Barcelona. Once the
Spanish Civil War broke out, Farrás was appointed "military chief" of the
Central Committee of Antifascist Militias and later assigned to the
Aragon Front as military adviser to the
Durruti Column, without ever meeting with
Buenaventura Durruti. He returned to Barcelona and spent the rest of the war in bureaucratic positions, as military governor of
Tarragona and, later, of
Girona. At the end of the civil war he went into exile in
Mexico. He held a high position in a bank run by Catalan exiles. He collaborated with articles on military strategy in the magazine ''
Quaderns de l'exili'' and proposed to form a unit of Catalan soldiers together with the
Allies during the
Second World War. He died in Mexico in 1949. == References ==