Eugeni Xammar i Puigventós (Barcelona, January 17, 1888 – L'Ametlla del Vallès, December 5, 1973)[1] was an international journalist, career diplomat, and polyglot translator (he spoke seven languages and wrote five) who lived most of his life outside of Catalonia as a correspondent in Europe during the stormy, unstable years of the First and Second World Wars.
He worked as a correspondent in Buenos Aires, Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin, Washington DC, and Geneva, and traveled to Italy, Russia, and Austria, among others.
His longest assignment was in Berlin, between 1922 and 1936, during the Weimar Republic, when Xammar published in 1923 an alleged interview of Hitler, the first known such of the future Führer, in which he explains how he was incubating what he called "the serpent's egg".
Always committed to the Republic and to the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya, of which he was a representative in Paris during the postwar period under President Irla, his actions led to Francoist reprisals and extradition, as well as the disappearance of his name and his work for an entire generation of students until his posthumous memoir was published in the mid 1970s.
He was very critical of those who, despite sharing positions like his own, considered themselves "non-belligerents" with the postwar Francoist regime, like for example the intellectuals who contributed to Destino magazine, despite it being a key liberal, Catalanist, democratic source of the times.
Although he was born in Barcelona, in 1900 he moved with his mother and his brother Josep Maria to the Can Xammar de Dalt manor house in Almetlla del Vallès.
Xammar was flabbergasted when he saw the new look, and he wrote, "A touch of Raspall—to call it that—was all that was needed to transform a magnificent, gigantic farmhouse, with two sides, into a sort of inedible Easter Egg that to this day still frightens any sensible person."
The pair made their home in Paris, but just a few months later, Xammar's health deteriorated due to a violent attack of Zoster Herpes that evolved into long, aching pain between his ribs.
Even though he didn't have his own house, he took advantage of any opportunity of talking up the town, like in 1931 when he brought the Civil Governor from the new Republican government, Carlos Esplá, accompanied by the journalist Francisco Madrid on an excursion to Ametlla.
At the beginning of the civil war, he was in Berlin and in October, 1940, a Barcelona judge ordered the 'confiscation of all the goods and the perpetual estrangement from national territory of Mr. Eugenio Xammar for being a red and a Catalanist'.
Once again it was Josep Badia who helped him by finding a local gentleman, Maties Barres, who gave him a lifelong pension for his house, Can Feliu, and with that, he was able to live out his last days.
He combined attendance at concerts at the Liceu with his participation as a member on the jury of the Jocs Florals de Rubí, or with the composition of a poem that would become the words to 'Nocturn musicat' by the founder of the Orfeó Gracienc, Joan Balcells.