The year 1876 marked the end of the Third Carlist War, a conflict that had a great impact on Catalonia and Euskal Herria. This date, now 150 years ago, consolidated the Bourbon regime of Alfonso XII after the Carlist defeat. One of the most emblematic figures of this period was Josep Agramunt i Llecha, popularly known as the "Capellà de Flix" (Priest of Flix), whose life illustrates the intensity of those years.
The Third Carlist War, which began in 1872, saw its turning point with the military coup by General Martínez Campos, the "Pronunciamiento de Sagunto", in 1874. This event precipitated the Bourbon restoration and paved the way for the Carlist defeat, although resistance continued for two more years in territories such as Catalonia.
Born in Flix, in the Ribera d'Ebre, in February 1828, Josep Agramunt i Llecha came from a humble farming family. His youth was marked by the influence of a Carlist family in Flix, which led him to adopt a traditionalist and conservative ideology. After studying philosophy and theology, he was ordained a priest in Tortosa and served in Amposta and Maials before returning to his hometown in 1871. Even then, the Bishop of Tortosa warned about his radical tendencies.
In June 1872, shortly after the war began, Agramunt led a group of 150 men and was appointed captain. His influence was such that even his replacement at the rectory of Flix, Antoni Díez, joined the armed Carlist cause.
“"The rectory of Flix has decidedly become a hotbed of evangelical leaders. After the so-called "Cura de Flix", famous for his misdeeds, the parish priest who came to replace him in that town has also rebelled."
The "Capellà de Flix" participated in the occupation of Reus in 1872, a unique operation that included the kidnapping of railway personnel and the cutting of telegraph lines. After the death of the Carlist lieutenant colonel Joan Francesch Serret during the occupation, Agramunt took command of the group. He also occupied other towns such as Selva del Camp, Vilallonga, and Valls, where he burned the entrance gates, and Móra la Nova in 1873, where he collected war contributions and cut the wires of the ferry crossing to pressure the local population.
The harshness of the conflict is reflected in episodes such as that of Vilaplana, where Isabeline militiamen were executed for not paying a ransom, or Agramunt's appropriation of Lieutenant Colonel Maturana's uniform and decorations. His ultraconservative nature led him to have a married couple in el Perelló beaten for having a civil marriage, justifying it with the phrase: "And now, religion is imposed by beatings".
When the war ended in Catalonia in 1875, he was appointed colonel of the Gandesa regiment and continued fighting in Euskal Herria. Wounded in January 1876, he recovered in the Irache hospital. On March 16, 1876, with the exile of the pretender Carlos VII, the war definitively ended. Agramunt was imprisoned in Madrid and later transferred to the prisons of Montjuïc and Tarragona, where he arrived by train on April 2, 1876, and faced eighteen charges.
His imprisonment and the Carlist defeat led to the withdrawal of his priestly licenses by the Bishop of Tortosa in August 1876, although he recovered them a month later thanks to the intervention of Pope Pius IX. Finally, he went into exile in France, where he served as chaplain of the Clichy cemetery, near Paris. According to some sources, he was assassinated on November 2, 1887, by a relative of one of his victims. His funeral in France became a demonstration of mourning by exiled Carlists, while the liberal satirical press used the news to recall his reputation as a "trabucaire priest".
