After the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Spanish republican parties agreed through the Pact of San Sebastián to prepare for a change of regime in case of victories in upcoming elections. In this project, there was a provision for the political autonomy of Catalonia, within the Spanish Republic. On 12 April 1931, local elections gave a large and unexpected majority in Catalonia to the Republican Left of Catalonia, a party that had been founded three weeks earlier by the union of the independentist Estat Català and the Catalan Republican Party. Two days later, few hours before the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in Madrid, ERC's leader, Francesc Macià, proclaimed the "Catalan Republic" from the balcony of the Palace of the Generalitat, "expecting that the other peoples of Spain would constitute themselves as republics, in order to establish an Iberian Confederation". The proclamation of Macià was preceded by a proclamation of the Spanish Republic by another ERC member, Lluís Companys, from the balcony of the City Hall, and the Spanish and Catalan Republican flags were hoisted from the balcony. Francesc Macià proclaimed himself president of Catalonia, and ratified in this position by the elected councillors of Barcelona. Macià immediately dismissed General, chief of the Spanish Army in Catalonia, appointing in his place General López Ochoa, who was loyal to the new republican government, while Companys was designated civil governor of Barcelona and Jaume Aiguader became mayor of Barcelona. The jurist was appointed president of the Territorial Audience of Barcelona. Helped by socialist Manuel Serra i Moret, he also appointed the ministers of the Catalan government, dominated by the Republican Left of Catalonia. He included among his ministers a member of the Radical Republican Party, a member of the UGTtrade union, a member of Acció Catalana, as well as two representatives from the Socialist Union of Catalonia, but none from the previously hegemonic and conservative Regionalist League.. Macià even offered a ministry to the anarchist trade union CNT, but the anarcho-syndicalist organization finally refused to participate, claiming its traditional apoliticism. The provisional government of the Catalan Republic was made up of:
The next steps of the new Catalan Government involved taking control of the territory. It ordered every municipality in Catalonia to ensure the proclamation of the Republic. It also appointed delegates of the government in the provinces of Girona, Lleida and Tarragona. On 15 April, a decree making Catalan the official language was passed. On the same day, Macià signed a decree which allowed freedom of broadcast time to. Three days later, the government of the new Spanish Republic, concerned about this proclamation and the duality of powers it created, sent three ministers to Barcelona in order to negotiate with Macià and the Catalan Government. Macià reached an agreement with the three ministers, in which the Catalan Republic was renamed the Generalitat of Catalonia, becoming an autonomous government within the Spanish Republic, that would be granted a Statute of Autonomy after the elections for Spain's Parliament. Francesc Macià would become the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia, a position he held until his death on 25 December 1933.
