Grillons! (Breaking Chains!), published in Santiago de Cuba by Catalan exiles - a publication that had already clearly proclaimed the independence of Catalonia. During the late 1910s, once World War I was over, Europe saw a wave of new nation-states being created, with the assistance of President Woodrow Wilson. The politics of the League of Nations (and later the United Nations) allowed many nations to seize the opportunity of independence, and Czechoslovakia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Iceland did so in 1918; other nations like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia, were declared independent, but were then immediately annexed by the Soviet Union. From the nations that hoped for independence, pressure groups began to mobilize internationally. In the Catalan case, the Comitè Pro-Catalunya (Pro-Catalonia Committee) was one of the most active. It was in this context that a need was perceived to have a flag as a symbol of Catalan aspiration; and, of course, a star appeared on it. Since then the estelada flag began to be spoken of. It was probably designed by Vicenç Albert Ballester, with the blue triangle signifying the blue sky of humanity, and the white star symbolizing freedom. The first photograph in which the flag appeared was in a publication dated the bulletin L’intransigent (The Intransigent) in 1918. It shows a group of young Americans and Catalan separatists holding both flags. Also in 1918, there was a comic strip in circulation—a stamp without postal value—dedicated to the future League of Nations, where there was also an estelada. There are several kinds of estelada. One is in the last number of La Tralla ("The Whip", a radical separatist magazine from the 1920s), before the coup d'état by Miguel Primo de Rivera. The other is in a document published by the Comitè Pro-Catalunya written in Catalan and Arabic, to greet and encourage one of the Moroccan leaders who revolted against Spain. In Cuba, it appeared for first time in the nameplate of the magazine La Nova Catalunya (1920), (The New Catalonia). The estelada flag went on to appear in other Catalan separatist publications. An estelada was owned by Francesc Macià during the failed invasion of Prats de Molló in 1926; it appeared between the imprisonment of the Catalan volunteers and their transfer to Paris to be put on trial. There are photographs of the volunteers with the estelada in several other places. In 1928, with the presidency