Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Revolutionary Fervour
The acting capital of Spain for much of the civil war, Barcelona was run by anarchists and
the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (Marxist Unification Workers' Party) Trotsky-
ist militia until mid-1937. Unions took over factories and public services, hotels and man-
sions became hospitals and schools, everyone wore workers' clothes, bars and cafes were
collectivised, trams and taxis were painted red and black (the colours of the anarchists), and
one-way streets were ignored as they were seen to be part of the old system.
The more radical anarchists were behind the burning of most of the city's churches and
the shooting of more than 1200 priests, monks and nuns. The anarchists in turn were
shunted aside by the communists (directed by Stalin from Moscow) after a bloody interne-
cine battle in Barcelona that left 1500 dead in May 1937. Later that year the Spanish Re-
publican government fled Valencia and made Barcelona the official capital (the government
had left besieged Madrid early in the war).
The Republican defeat at the hands of the Nationalists in the Battle of the Ebro in south-
ern Catalonia in the summer of 1938 left Barcelona undefended. It fell to the Nationalists
on 25 January 1939, triggering a mass exodus of refugees to France, where most were long
interned in makeshift camps. Purges and executions under Franco continued until well into
the 1950s. Former Catalan president Lluís Companys was arrested in France by the
Gestapo in August 1940, handed over to Franco, and shot on 15 October on Montjuïc. He
is reputed to have died with the words 'Visca Catalunya!' ('Long live Catalonia!') on his
lips.
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