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from Russia and the 35,000 volunteers of the
International Brigades
, the
Republic could never compete with the professional armies and the massive
assistance from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany that the Nationalists enjoyed.
Foreign volunteers arriving in Barcelona were sent to the front with companies
that were ill-equipped, lines of communication were poor, and, furthermore,
the Left was torn by international divisions that at times led almost to civil war
within its own ranks. George Orwell’s account of this period in his
Homage to
Catalonia
is instructive: fighting in an anarchist militia, he was eventually forced
to flee the country when the infighting became intolerable, though many
others like him were not so fortunate and ended up in prison or executed.
Eventually, the nonintervention of the other European governments effec-
tively handed victory to the Nationalists. The Republican government fled
Madrid first forValencia, and then moved on to base itself at Barcelona in 1937.
The
Battle of the Ebro
around Tortosa saw massive casualties on both sides;
Nationalist troops advanced on Valencia in 1938, and from the west were also
approaching Catalunya from their bases in Navarre. When Bilbao was taken
by the Nationalists, the Republicans’ fight on the
Aragón front
was lost.
The final Republican hope – that war in Europe over Czechoslovakia would
draw the Allies into a war against fascism and deprive Franco of his foreign
aid – evaporated in September 1938, with the British Prime Minister Cham-
berlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich, and Franco was able to call on new
arms and other supplies from Germany for a final offensive against Catalunya.
The
fall of Barcelona
came on January 25, 1939 – the Republican parliament
held its last meeting at Figueres a few days later. Republican soldiers, cut off in
the valleys of the Pyrenees, made their way across the high passes into France,
joined by women and children fearful of a fascist victory. Among the refugees
and escapees was
Lluís Companys
, president of the Generalitat, who was later
captured in France by the Germans, returned to Spain and, under orders from
Franco, was shot at the castle prison on Montjuïc in 1940.
Catalunya in Franco’s Spain
Although the Civil War left more than half a million dead, destroyed a quarter
of a million homes and sent a third of a million people (including 100,000
Catalans) into exile, Franco was in no mood for reconciliation.With his govern-
ment recognized by Allied powers, including Britain and France, he set up
war
tribunals
that ordered executions and provided concentration camps in which
upwards of two million people were held until “order” had been established
by authoritarian means. Until as late as the mid-1960s, isolated partisans in
Catalunya (and elsewhere in Spain) continued to resist fascist rule.
The
Catalan language
was banned again, in schools, churches, the press
and in public life; only one party was permitted, and censorship was rigorously
enforced. The economy was in ruins, and Franco did everything possible to
further the cause of Madrid against Catalunya, starving the region of invest-
ment and new industry. Pyrenean villagers began to drift down into the towns
and cities in a fruitless search for work, accelerating the depopulation of the
mountains.
After
World War II
(during which the country was too weak to be anything
but neutral), Spain was economically and politically isolated.There were serious
strikes in 1951 in Barcelona and in 1956 across the whole of Catalunya.
What saved Franco was the acceptance of
American aid
, offered by General
Eisenhower in 1953 on the condition that Franco provide land for US air bases
– a condition he was more than willing to accept. Prosperity did increase after
CONTEXTS
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A history of Barcelona and Catalunya