Why go
This history adds meaning to Barcelona’s twentieth-century streets and public spaces. It shows how the city’s political movements were active participants in the war, and why the later Franco dictatorship had a profound effect on Catalan public life. Those divisions shaped the decades that followed.
The full story
Barcelona’s political movements made it a centre of Republican resistance when the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. The city had planned a People’s Olympiad as an alternative to the Berlin Games, but the outbreak of war cancelled it. Some would-be participants joined militias defending the Republic. In Barcelona, loyal forces and militias defeated the military uprising, while anarchist, socialist and communist groups became deeply involved in the city’s wartime life. Their shared opposition to Franco did not erase sharp differences. In May 1937, armed fighting broke out among groups on the Republican side, exposing the tension within the city’s coalition. Barcelona was then subjected to air raids, including attacks by forces supporting Franco. The war closed for the city when Franco’s troops entered in January 1939. These events matter beyond a chronology of battles: they explain why the following dictatorship treated Catalan institutions and public language as political questions. When reading the city’s modern history, keep both experiences in view: resistance to the coup and division within the forces that opposed it.