CHAPEL OF THE MOST HONOURABLE HERIBERT BARRERA

Heribert Barrera i Costa was born in Barcelona on July 6, 1917. His father, Martí Barrera, was a deputy in the Parliament and a member of the Generalitat of Catalonia. During the Civil War, he served as an artillery soldier on the fronts of Aragón and the Segre. He exiled to France in 1939 and remained there until 1952.

He earned a degree in Chemical Sciences from the University of Barcelona and obtained degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Montpellier (Languedoc). He was a Chemical Engineer from the Institut Chimique de Montpellier (University of Montpellier) and earned a doctorate in physical sciences from the Sorbonne (Paris).

Barrera served as a teaching assistant and course coordinator at the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Montpellier. He was a research associate at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New Hampshire (USA). In 1970, he became a contracted professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, retiring in 1984.

He authored numerous scientific papers published in specialized French, English, and American journals over four decades (1944-1984) and wrote politically oriented articles in both Catalan and foreign press. He received the Prat de la Riba Award from the Institut d’Estudis Catalans for his work "New Contributions to the Synthesis of Aryl-Aliphatic Acids and to the Theory of Intramolecular Acylation."

Barrera served as president of the Catalan Society of Physical, Chemical, and Mathematical Sciences. He was an emeritus member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans and served as president of its Science Section. He was also a member of the Société Française de Chimie and the American Chemical Society, and he sat on the advisory board of Òmnium Cultural. He was a former president of the Friends of UNESCO Club in Barcelona, the Ateneu Barcelonès (1997-2003), and the Association of Former Deputies of the Parliament of Catalonia (1997-2003).

He began his political activity in 1934 with the National Federation of Students of Catalonia and the nationalist school bloc. He joined the Youth of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya in 1935. In 1952, he undertook the clandestine reorganization of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, becoming its leading figure in the interior and serving as Secretary General (1976-1987). He was a member of the Catalan Council of the European Movement and served as a deputy in the Congress of Deputies (1977-1980). He was elected as a deputy in the Parliament of Catalonia (1980-1988) and, during the first legislature, served as the president of the chamber (1980-1984). He was also a Member of the European Parliament (1991-1994) and, from 1991 to 1995, president of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya. In 2000, he received the Gold Medal of the Parliament of Catalonia.

He spent the last years of his life in the Baix Camp region and was buried in this cemetery in August 2011.