Well worth listening to this frank 15 minute Radio 4 interview with Stuart Christie “In 1964 a young Scot called Stuart Christie joined a plot to assassinate the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco. He had become friends with Spanish exiles living in London and was keen to help end Franco’s rule. But the plot failed and Christie ended up in jail. He has been telling his story to Mike Lanchin. ” BBC Radio 4
Thanks to Christine of stillcause for flagging this.
One of the revolutionary changes in Catalonia during the war, was the establishment of the CENU (Consell de l’Escola Nova Unificada) school board on 27 July 1936 which provided free, secular, mixed education for ALL, including to my knowledge the creation of the first free public nurseries in Spain.
We could do with going back to this universal system today, instead of the elitist public/semi-private/private modal which dominates today in Catalonia.
Some 4,000 Spanish Republicans were deported by the Nazis to the occupied Channel Islands and were forced to work building fortifications; only 59 survived. From Paul Preston’s “The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge“
“The first bus built in the workshops of the collectivized General Autobus Company” I assume the year is 1936 and refers to the Compañía General de Autobuses based in Barcelona. From here
Documentary about the Francoist repression and the mass graves in Spain. (in Spanish)
Plaque to the victims of the March 1938 bombings of Barcelona. Carrer del Carme, Raval. Dozens of people were killed in the street.
An odd one. “Unidad”, the newspaper of the fascist Falange printed in San Sebestián from 6th May 1937 claiming that anarchists had killed Lluis Companys during the Barcelona May Days and asks “has [CNT leader] Garcia Oliver also fallen’?
Clearly wishful thinking, though Companys was later executed/murdered by the Franco regime in 1940.
Thanks to Hessel Schaaf for sending me this. Source here
A belated Holocaust Memorial Day remembrance.
Llorenç Vitria, from Barcelona and flyweight Olympic champion in Paris 1924, managed to cross into France in 1939 where he was later captured by the Nazis, and sent to the hell of Gusen, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, Austria. Here he was registered as prisoner number 4,074 and given a unifom with an “S” denoting “Spanien”. The SS used to entertain themselves in the camp organising boxing fights between the prisoners. Without hope and tired of all the horror, on 18 June 1941 he committed suicide by throwing himself against an electrified fence . The plaque can be seen today in Mauthausen. More here in Catalan
A shooting gallery in Plaça de la Universitat, Barcelona. 1936 named “Pim Pam Pum Antifeixista” (Anti-fascist bang-bang) in which participants got to shoot the insurgent generals. Profits went to the militias, including 97 pesetas on 13 October 1936 as you read here in La Vanguardia published the day after.
Industrial memory in Barceloneta. Entrance to the great Maquinista factory, once the largest complex in Spain