disguised independentist in Madrid, and as a traitor in Barcelona. “You cannot be at the same time Catalonia’s Simon Bolívar and Spain’s Bismarck”, he was famously told once during a parliamentary debate by Nicelo Alcalá Zamora on December 10, 1918. Cambó was appointed Spanish Minister twice by the King, in the context of larger political agreements that reserved a seat to Catalan representatives in the Council of Ministers. In 1918 he was appointed Minister of Development and Public Investment (Ministerio de Fomento); in 1921 he was appointed Minister of Finance. The Coup d’État of General Primo de Rivera made him depart from active politics, and focus in business and the publication of several works, mostly of political reflection: his vision of the Middle East; considerations about Italian Fascism; and more generally, about dictatorships. In 1930 he wrote "Per la Concòrdia" (“In favor of Harmony”), which sought to reconcile the monarchy and autonomy of Catalonia. In a last political effort in the already tense Catalan and Spanish political environment that would lead to the fall of the Spanish Monarchy, Cambó founded in March 1931 a new party, the “Constitutional Center”, hoping in vain that he could stem the Republican tide. After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1932, Cambó moved to France returning shortly afterwards. In February 1933 he changed the name of his older party, now renamed as Liga Catalana or Catalan League, and in that year November's elections he was elected to Parliament for the last time. The Civil War and final years When General Francisco Franco and his Nationalist forces revolted against the Republic in July 1936, Cambó was outside the country. While no link has ever been proven between him and the rebels, Cambó did provide financial support to the “Nationals” in non-military areas during the Civil War that followed the "Alzamiento" or uprising. Cambó would write later in his Memoirs: “having to choose between idiots and criminals, I chose the idiots”. In his view, the success of the Republicans in the war would have put the whole of Spain under the control of Moscow and Communism. Francesc Cambó never returned to live in Spain after the Civil War, which he passed in exile with his family in Paris and Montreux (Switzerland). In 1942, after two years living in New York, he moved to Buenos Aires, where he died in 1947. He was survived by