It was an extraordinary Barcelona, ... everything had changed.
You couldn't tell Barcelona was at war,
but you could tell there was a revolution going on.
There were far more flags and many people in the streets,
calling for volunteers, and many lorries leaving for the front,
And many songs.
There had never been so much singing.
The people of Barcelona celebrated.
Within days of the army rising, revolution had burst out spontaneously
in most of republican Spain.
The republican government was helpless.
Later government and revolution would come into confrontation.
A confrontation that would help to seal the fate of the republic.
From Madrid, and other republican cities,
columns of workers militia set out to fight the army rebels.
In these first weeks of the civil war,
the militias were the only real defence of the republic.
They were young, enthusiastic, recklessly confident.
But the columns had been thrown together in haste.
Worse, each column was linked to one of the different parties or trade unions.
The was no co-ordination, no central command.
At first socialists and communists, anarchists and moderate republicans
marched together.
Later, their deep disagreements about war, and revolution
were to threaten the fighting power and the very existence of the republic.
But now in July 1936, the ecstasy and hope of revolution
dominated men and women.
Everything had changed, even in the bullring.
The matadors put away their brilliant uniforms,
and in street clothes raised the clenched fist.
Catalonia was the anarchists stronghold.
Here the revolution was more profound, more extreme.
By the end of July, anarchists who had seized weapons
to defeat the rising, dominated the city of Barcelona.
It was a moment anarchist militants like Josep Costa
had been waiting for.
At that moment, when society burst wide open,
there was such tremendous enthusiasm among the working class.
This was channeled through the unions, the parties, everywhere.
People participated with such enthusiasm, such vitality.
But it's very difficult to describe it now after so many years,
and to examine that situation coldly.
But I do have to say that among ourselves, many of us said:
"Now is the time to destroy all that has been oppressing us".
The Catalan government ruled only in name.
All structures of power collapsed.
Churches and monasteries were burned and looted.
Helpless, the Catalan government offered power to the anarchists,
but, true to their principles, the refused it.
The anarchists believed that out of this revolutionary explosion,
the people would create their own free society,
without state, church or capitalism.
Federica Montseny was a famous anarchist orator.
Had we taken power because we were the majority,
it would have meant betraying a pact of common struggle
we had, in a way, sealed with the blood
of so many of our men from many different sides,
communists, socialists, syndicalists, and above all anarchists.
It would have meant betraying that pact, and doing in Catalonia
what Lenin and Trotsky had done in the Soviet Union
with the takeover of power by the Bolsheviks.
We didn't do it, and we have been criticized many times for it.
With hindsight, who knows, perhaps we should have done it.
Some anarchists now feel that their refusal to take power
was the beginning of their undoing.
At that time, the anarchists had no doubt about their main objective,
... to defeat fascism.
But for them, the campaign was not just against the army rebels,
but against capitalism itself.
While the columns surged out to defeat the enemy,
committees of workers in the towns struggled to
construct a new order out of the confusion.
At that time it seemed impossible to solve those initial difficulties,
so looking back, people really showed a lot of common sense.
Everything was improvised. You could call it a miracle,
despite the religious meaning of the word.
It was a miracle achieved by the ordinary people.
As the chaos subsided, this new revolutionary society
began to function. Much of the Catalan economy
was now being run by the workers themselves.
In Barcelona, trams and cinemas,
factories, department stores, and even greyhound tracks,
were run by their own employees.
The trade unions saw to food supplies.
Union lorries drove out to the villages with goods to exchange for food.
Barter, not purchasing, kept Barcelona fed
for the first weeks of the civil war.
In some places, money itself, seen by anarchists
as inherently evil, was abolished.
Shopping was done with vouchers issued by local committees.
What did these vouchers represent?
Well, they had to represent hours of production,
the hours spent by a carpenter building a piece of furniture,
or the hours spent by a peasant harvesting,
... working on the fields.
Everything was calculated in hours of production.
Peasants liked it because it made them equal to the industrial workers,
... making all work equal.
Vouchers bought bread at the bakers,
but they now also bought lunch at the Barcelona Ritz.
The big hotels had been turned into hospitals,
or into canteens serving cheap meals to militia men,
... and working class families,
as this anarchist newsreel proclaimed.
Now that the factories and workplaces were in the hands of the workers,
anarchist union leaders like Josep Costa.
fought to start production again.
We told the workers to get back to the factory and wait for our instructions.
Immediately we called all the factory owners and executives
to a meeting at the town hall.
We told them: "Well gentlemen, something big has happened here.
"We don't know what's going to happen but the factories have to continue functioning.
"We ask you to be at work tomorrow at whatever hour you're supposed to start.
"Five o'clock or eight o'clock. Agreed! ... agreed!
"But we have to warn you, labour relations will be
"very different from now on."
The CNT, the anarchist trade union,
had been taken by surprise when the revolution began.
It was anarchist militants who rallied the workers
to take over their industries.
Where the old bosses remained, they had to take orders
from these worker's committees.
Nearly 2,000 enterprises were collectivized in Catalonia.
The greatest experiment in worker's self-management
Western Europe has ever seen.
The workers now set about improving their working conditions.
Free medical care and adequate pensions were introduced.
But at the same time, some of the old employers
were hounded as enemies of the people.
Six days after it started, around July 25th,
10 or 11 industrialists were killed in Terrassa ... they were murdered.
The Catalan bourgeoisie were seized by this general panic.
Everybody thought his head was going to be chopped off ... any minute.
I told my father that we should leave.
We still had time to leave because everything was so chaotic.
But he said: "If God wants me to be killed, they can kill me,
... but I'm staying.
Revolutionary terror spread through the republican areas.
The middle classes in most of Spain had supported the army rebellion.
But the liberal Catalan middle classes,
had remained largely pro-republican.
Now they became the victims of this terror,
and turned against the republic.
I didn't belong to this side.
I wasn't an anarchist. I wasn't a communist.
I was a liberal man who respected other people's way of thinking.
On the other hand, I could never have fought on Franco's side,
which was, and still is, totally opposed to my way of thinking.
For the moderate, republican government,
the revolution was threatening to split society.
It also threatened its chances of winning the war.
The Spanish communists took the same view.
But it was not only the killings and the collectives
that shocked the middle class.
The revolution had destroyed a traditional way of life.
The power of the church and its moral code disintegrated.
For many women on the republican side,
it was a time of astonishing liberation.
That revolutionary explosion gave us women absolute freedom.
We couldn't live war as men were living it.
For men, things hadn't changed all that much.
Our lives however, had really changed.
Women took men's places, not only in the factories,
not only as a workforce, not only in the war industry,
... it was all women.
At that time, to be a woman, and to be young, was the ultimate,
The revolution brought women instant and radical changes.
Abortion was soon made available on demand.
Initially women went to the front to fight and die in the trenches.
For Spanish feminists, prostitution was a relic
of capitalist exploitation to be abolished.
They set up schools to re-educate prostitutes.
Revolutionary vice squads cleaned up the red light district of Barcelona.
But it wasn't easy to change old habits overnight.
At the union there were arguments.
"We've heard you shut the brothels, where will people go now?"
The others would apply: "They can find a girlfriend, or get married".
"That can't be done overnight", they'd say.
"You could shut two brothels today, another two tomorrow.
"so the people could get used to the idea."
"The same with the taverns." "What about the waiters?
"What will they do for a living?"
"Teach them another trade." "Where?"
You see there were those we called the pragmatists,
the realists who could see the revolution wasn't easy.
Then there were the moralists.
Those who gave the Spanish revolution the healthy air it had.
Anarchists disapproved of marriage,
believing that couples should unite or part freely,
without any license from church or state.
Young revolutionaries happily adopted that advice,
but many mothers were appalled by free love.
Some mothers even came to the union to speak with
people they considered apostles of free love
"Look, my daughter left home without telling me.
"She's living somewhere with someone".
We would say: "We are all in favour of it".
"Yes but that boy will leave. I don't even know his name".
Anyway, the union decided this had to legalised somehow.
So they invented what they called "revolutionary weddings".
Revolutionary weddings took many different forms.
This is what happened in the Barcelona woodworkers union.
We made three copies of the marriage certificate,
the original and two more. The union kept the original,
and one copy each was given to the man and the woman who were told:
"If at any time you have any problems and wish to separate,
"come here with both pieces of paper,
"we take our copy and set fire to the three of them,
"and you'll be free again".
That was the official wedding ceremony.
But as with many other things, it became necessary to
force the situation a bit, for there wasn't enough time
for persuasion and proper education.
So the president of the union, a very amusing man from Seville,
would take the man aside after the ceremony and tell him:
"Look, what we said about burning the documents
"isn't quite as easy as you think. It's something that has to be
"thought about carefully, and properly weighed up.
"So don't come here pestering me, because if you do,
"I'll give you such a kick in the balls
"you'll remember it for the rest of your days ... right?
"So off you go, be happy. Long live the revolution."
These revolutionary changes were taking place
throughout republican Spain.
Led by improvised military commanders like Buenaventura Durruti,
the militia columns pushed their way towards the front.
Young labourers rushed to join the militia.
As the columns advanced, they spread the revolution.
The ancient dream of a collective society without profit or property
was made reality in the villages of Aragon.
In many places, money itself was abolished.
All forms of production were owned by the community,
... run by their workers.
These collectives formed an independent
anarchist area within the republic.
The council of Aragon coordinated their activities.
Mas de las Matas was one of the many Aragonese villages
collectivized in the summer of 1936.
For the villagers, the experience has now become
a well remembered legend.
These three men were among the young local anarchists
who abolished private property in Mas de las Matas
Benigno Castañer was a carpenter.
We built a large workshop on the outskirts of the village,
and all the carpenters went to work there.
They appointed a delegate to represent them
at the collectivization committee.
The same was done for the bricklayers, barbers, blacksmiths,
for every trade. The tailors also.
Well, all the barbers had joined the collective voluntarily.
They were all in it voluntarily, weren't they.
A large shop was found for them, and three or four barbers in the village
all brought along their tools and their chairs and worked for free.
Most of their work was done when the peasants
came back from the fields in the evening.
This caused some problems because some people would say:
"Look at those lazy barbers.
"They spend the whole day walking around doing nothing."
So we had to explain to everybody that they worked
until 10pm so that everybody could be served.
Some people didn't realise how late the barbers had to work.
This is one of those minor inconveniences.
The anarchist forced all known right-wingers in the village
to join the collective as well.
The upheaval of revolution led to terrorism and repression.
In Aragon, as in Catalonia, armed gangs drove around
killing the better off, the right wingers,
and the followers of the church.
In Mas de las Matas, although the local committee tried to prevent it,
six right-wingers were murdered just outside the village.
Here, the only people allowed to keep their property
were those left-wingers who were not anarchists.
For the rest, members of the collective by choice, or out of fear,
the old world of cash and property, rich and poor,
... now disappeared.
Money was abolished and we created what we called
"the family card" with all the members of the family.
And everything that wasn't produced here was allotted
according to the numbers in each family.
For example, sugar, rice, even meat,
100 grams per person, per day.
It was the same for everybody, there were no preferences.
Everybody ate as much as they wanted of the local produce.
So money for use in the village was completely abolished.
The first problem was that because everything was free,
... coffee, tobacco, this was a problem.
Everything was free, so everybody wanted to drink coffee, smoke, and so on.
So this was something that had to be corrected.
That's when we started rationing cigarettes.
Tobacco was rationed, but we never denied anybody his cigarettes.
This was a contradiction for us because we were against all vices.
Yet we were well aware that by handing out free cigarettes
we encouraged people to smoke, but we couldn't deny them to anybody.
For the anarchist peasants in Mas de las Matas and other villages,
collectivization brought instant benefits.
The profit motive had disappeared.
Everyone now worked only for the community.
I joined the collective fully convinced, and I gave everything.
At home they were nearly crying because I took everything to the collective.
Our sheep, all our money, everything ... with such enthusiasm.
And working as much as we did before because the harvest had been delayed.
We worked day and night.
In this summer of 1936,
the revolution was triumphing in most of republican Spain.
But it was already failing in its most basic task,
... to win the war.
Everywhere the militias were being held or defeated
by the advancing rebel armies.
In this crisis, the republic was divided.
For some, the government and the communists,
revolution must wait until the war was won.
For the anarchists, and many socialists,
the only way to win the war was to defend and extend the revolution.
This argument was soon to tear apart and transform the republic.
Unleashing a civil war, within the civil war.
In central and northern Spain,
the army rebels were winning the war.
General Franco soon became the absolute
political and military ruler of the nationalist side,
as his regular soldiers captured town after town.
The militia columns, brave but disorganised,
had no unified command.
The revolution had left the republican government helpless.
And yet initially, the new revolutionary leaders did not form
a new central government or military command of their own.
Two months after the start of the war
Franco's troops were approaching Madrid.
Now at last, with the republic on the brink of defeat,
the politicians in Madrid took action.
In September 1936,
the socialist union leader Francisco Largo Caballero
formed a so-called Government of Victory,
with socialist and communist ministers.
A strong military command was formed.
Further revolution was discouraged.
The anarchist revolution still controlled much of
Catalonia and Aragon.
The anarchist leaders refused on principal to join
the new central government, but this Government of Victory
was going to centralise political decision making,
and leave the anarchists out in the cold.
The new Madrid government was a triumph for
the rapidly expanding Communist Party.
In line with Stalin's policy they stood for
an anti-fascist popular front.
An alliance of left-wing and middle class parties,
which would appear moderate, and responsible enough
to win support from western democracies.
They also wanted to check the revolution,
and impose their discipline.
It was clear that we were entering a civil war
and facing and organised enemy with an organised army,
and that we needed a real army ourselves.
The starting point for this army was the 5th Regiment.
The discipline of the 5th Regiment was powerful propaganda
for the communist approach to the war.
A communist helping to build a new popular army
believed in the values of obedience, rank, authority.
Their old rivals, the anarchists, were anti-militarist.
Opposed on principle to hierarchical discipline.
For them, war like revolution, must be made through popular initiative.
I have always believed that the day they started to militarise the people,
the day that the spontaneous nature of popular combat was destroyed,
we started to lose the war.
This is something the communists have always refused to accept.
But all styles of war need weapons,
and the Soviet Union soon became the only country
prepared to supply them in large quantities.
This, in turn, increased the influence of the Spanish communists.
A minority party when the civil war began,
they were now becoming the strongest political force in the republic.
Soviet military aid arrived just in time to help defend
the Spanish capital.
No Pasarán! ... they shall not pass!
By November, Franco's troops had encircled Madrid on three sides.
When the final attack came, the people of Madrid
fought shoulder to shoulder with loyal officers
and with the republican militias who had been retreating
for the past four months.
The attack on Madrid was beaten back.
The defence of Madrid became a legend,
and it gave the republic fresh hope for victory.
The anarchist military commander, Durruti, died in the battle for Madrid.
His funeral in Barcelona became
an immense anarchist show of faith.
But the movement was already beginning to split under the pressure
of its own internal contradictions.
With the enemy at the gates of Madrid, the anarchist leaders
had shelved their principles and joined the government.
Four anarchists became ministers in the central government.
Others had already joined the Catalan regional government.
Their followers were shocked and confused.
Moreover, in Catalonia, the anarchist heartland,
anarchist collectivization was being checked.
The regional government was asserting control of the industries
which anarchists had collectivized.
Josep Tarradellas was the Catalan finance counselor.
I was the first counselor and finance counselor
of the regional government, the Generalitat.
Therefore, faced with the CNT's refusal to allow control
over the collectivized industries, I ordered all the banks
not to cash any cheques or hand over money to them
without my permission.
So the workers found themselves in a difficult situation.
They would run out of money, and at the bank they'd be told:
"No, I need the Generalitat's permission."
Then they would come to us and we would say:
"No, unless you allow us to control the collective."
As the anarchists weakened, the communists became stronger.
The party attracted many who felt threatened by the revolution.
Middle class moderates who admired communist discipline at the front.
and order and restraint behind the lines.
Revolutionary chaos still reigned in much of republican Spain.
This led to an overwhelming feeling of unease in the country.
As we were in favour of discipline and control,
laying down all the rules necessary for re-establishing
the army, the police, the courts of justice.
Obviously, all these things were welcomed by the population.
But the communist methods of recruitment
attracted bitter criticism from other parties in the republic.
In contrast with the other parties, the communist party
opened its doors unconditionally and without any controls,
to anybody who wanted to join.
What they wanted was to build up their party by taking advantage
of the very special circumstances in Spain at the time.
So that's the way they did it. They were very smart about it.
It was easy to grow that way.
They made the soldier a sergeant, the sergeant a lieutenant,
and the professional man a captain.
They cultivated people's ambitions so they became unconditional supporters.
They made sure that people who had no influence in their civilian lives,
became important in military terms.
The communists had been forced to change their line.
At first they had opposed the revolution as a threat to the republic.
In March 1937, they admitted
that significant revolutionary gains had been made,
but any further changes would have to wait.
The over-riding aim must be to win the war.
For the communists, this meant bringing
home rule in Catalonia and the Basque country
under central control.
One source of friction between the central government and Catalonia
was control of the war industry.
The only cartridge factory in our zone was near Toledo.
So my trip to Madrid was to ask the central government,
that because the factory was still in our hands,
it should be brought to Catalonia, which was the only place
where it could function properly.
Tarradellas' visit to Madrid ended in failure.
The government, wary of growing regional power,
refused his request.
So I left Madrid without the Toledo factory.
A short while later I heard, as did all the other Spaniards,
that Toledo had fallen into the hands of General Franco.
They chose, in a way, to leave this factory in Franco's hands
rather than have it in a place where it could have been useful.
But these squabbles over regional rights were far less ominous
than the collision between communists and their political rivals
over the whole future of the republic.
At this meeting in March 1937,
José Díaz the communist general secretary asked:
"Who are the enemies of the republic?"
He answered himself: "Fascists, uncontrollables, and Trotskyists.
He was following Stalin's policy in the Soviet Union
There the uncontrollables, ... the anarchists,
had already been purged.
The Spanish Civil War coincided with the height
of Stalin's purges of his political rivals.
Leon Trotsky had been exiled in 1929.
Bolshevik veterans like Zinoviev and Kamenev
seen here in 1926 at a state funeral,
were executed in 1936.
Trotskyist was the label given to any independent Marxist
who defied the instructions of Stalin,
and the Comintern in Moscow.
Communists in Western Europe justified these purges.
Trotsky was pilloried as a Nazi agent.
Bill Bailey was an American communist
fighting with the international brigades.
We had heard that Joe Stalin was trying to
keep the country secured and safe,
and get rid of all the enemies that was trying to
constantly tear down the Soviet Union.
Therefore he was conducting these purges,
and we were led to believe that they were enemies of the people.
Enemies of the Russian people.
Consequently enemies of the working class every place.
Later on, of course, it proved that he was wrong.
That he was nothing but a paranoid, sick, SOB, in many cases.
These people that were purged came from the background
of fighting for the great ideals of socialism.
The went through all the aches and pains of the terror
to create this society,
only to be taken out later as dogs and shot.
The POUM was an independent Spanish Marxist party
which largely attacked Stalin's dictatorship.
Following the Moscow line, the Spanish communists
called the POUM Trotskyist, which is wasn't,
and accused it of collaborating with fascism.
Frank Deegan was a Liverpool docker
who had volunteered to fight in Spain.
We were informed by our political commissars
that our troops on the Aragon front who were mainly composed
of anarchists divisions and members of the POUM,
who were commonly known as ???
were fraternizing with the enemy, even playing football matches.
By the 1st May 1937, the political tension in Barcelona
was so acute that the Mayday parade had to be canceled.
The anarchists and the POUM were still powerful in the city.
The communists were impatient for a showdown,
as was the central government with the exception of the anarchist ministers.
The conflict began here, at a Barcelona telephone exchange,
which was still run by anarchists.
One of the girls on duty that day was Enriqueta Garcia Cervera.
I was at the switchboard near the window.
The anarchist guards were half asleep over their rifles.
At about 3 o'clock I looked out and saw
three lorry loads of assault guards pull up outside.
They jumped out and raced into the building.
They started going up the stairs.
I think most of the anarchist guards were on the first floor.
Then I heard shots and I was even more frightened.
The anarchists saw this as the all out challenge they had been expecting.
They raised barricades throughout the city.
Shooting began in the streets.
On the Aragon front, some anarchist units
began to march back to Barcelona.
The anarchist, Juan Manuel Molina, was defence undersecretary in Catalonia.
I phoned all the commanders of the divisions at the front
and told them to stay put and secure their sectors.
That everything was quiet.
I told them everything was under control in Barcelona,
and that we had more than enough men here.
On the Barcelona streets
the anarchists could have used their superior strength
before the government reinforcements arrived.
The truth is that in Barcelona we controlled the situation.
I hadn't intervened yet.
All the military barracks were in my hands,
except for the Karl Marx barracks,
and we had it surrounded by the people
just waiting for my orders to attack.
The anarchist ministers rushed to Barcelona.
One of them, Federica Montseny, appealed to her followers over the radio.
She argued that they could not afford a civil war behind the lines.
I tried to make them understand that they couldn't go on fighting.
That they had to lay down their weapons and end that fighting.
That the battlefronts would collapse,
and it would all end shamefully in front of the whole world.
This appeal horrified the anarchist militants at the barricades.
Their leaders they thought, had betrayed them.
To lay down their arms would mean the end of their revolution.
At the barricades you heard all the insults you can possibly imagine.
Old militants were saying, that the ministers
had forgotten what it was like to be a worker.
That the revolution had to be carried out
at the barricades, not at the ministries.
And they were going to shoot those ministers.
There I heard all those threats from people who were disappointed.
They all remembered what had happened to the anarchists
under the Bolsheviks in Russia.
They feared the same would happen here, as it did eventually.
That they would be victims of the repression of the communists.
The republic brought in troops to put down the insurrection.
Five days of fighting had left about 500 dead.
The anarchists' power, and their revolutionary vision of the future,
... now lay shattered.
That's where we lost the war, the revolution, and all the hopes
that the Spanish people had placed in the transformation.
That's where it all ended, in the May events.
The May events also overthrew Largo Caballero,
the socialist prime minister of the republic.
He had been too independent, too tolerant, for communist taste.
Now he was forced out of office and replaced by Juan Negrín,
another socialist, but more authoritarian than Largo Caballero
With the anarchist revolution checked in Catalonia,
the communist were now free to deal with their other rivals,
the POUM, who had fought alongside the anarchists
in the May events of Barcelona.
In June 1937, POUM was declared illegal,
and an order issued for the arrest of its leaders.
The first to be taken was Andrés Nin, the POUM's general secretary.
Julián Gorkin, another member of the POUM executive,
... witnessed his arrest.
Another party member, ???
came up to my office to tell me the police had come to arrest us
and take Andrés Nin away.
I looked out at the balcony and saw Nin walking outside,
quite casually, surrounded by policemen.
I never would have thought that I would never see him again,
and the terrible tragedy that was being prepared for the death of Andrés Nin.
Nin was never seen again.
He was apparently taken to this prison in Alcalá de Henares,
and later murdered by Stalin's agents.
Other POUM leaders were later put on trial for treason.
The price for halting revolution,
and restoring order to the republic was high.
Random terror was over, for the communists
now controlled much of the political police.
This nationalist propaganda film
made at the end of the war, allegedly shows
communist torture cells in a Barcelona monastery.
Freezing in refrigerators and disorientation techniques
were used, not only against Franco's agents,
but also on the republics enemies within its own camp.
Aragon was the last area still under anarchist control.
In August 1937, the communist military commander, Enrique Líster,
marched in to restore the central government's authority.
The communist troops returned land to all those
who had been forced to join the anarchist collectives.
The central government, with communist support
had demolished the anarchist revolution
and imposed its discipline.
But at the front the republic was failing.
It's new disciplined popular army continued to be defeated.
Shortly after its takeover of Aragon,
the republican army launched another offensive in an attempt
to take pressure off the north.
The first major battle was at the small town of Belchite.
As so often happened, many republican soldiers gave their lives
to capture a town which was strategically unimportant.
It was a battle that American volunteer Bill Bailey will never forget.
What happened was that the fascists were so deeply entrenched
that they made every single foot here a costly expense to us.
Our dead was everyplace.
Every street had men laying dead in it.
Getting inside the house, get them out of the house.
The only way we could do it was punch a hole through the wall,
throw a few hand grenades in, blow that place up,
punch the hole again making it bigger, then go into the house
and by God we did this hour after hour,
until finally we was able to take one entire street.
And you figured that on both sides,
our men were doing it on that side, we're doing it on this side,
we're taking a floor, we're getting into the basement.
and they're resisting every single place.
So finally, after say 4 or 5 hours,
we was able to take one whole street,
and that was at a very expensive cost.
Belchite finally fell.
But only months later, the nationalists recaptured it,
... at very little cost.
The Aragon offensive failed.
The republican army was weak on military tactics,
and had been torn by internal disunity.
By the end of 1937, the republic,
its territory shrinking under Franco's onslaught,
mounted another offensive.
This time the objective was the provincial capital of Teruel.
In the bitter cold of the Aragonese winter,
Teruel was conquered
Again the republic had won a bloody victory,
for an objective of little significance.
These victory celebrations in Barcelona were premature.
But the brave words of Catalan president Lluís Companys
could no longer boost republican morale.
In January 1938, Franco's troops
counter-attacked, and reconquered Teruel.
Again, an initial republican success,
... had ended in disaster.
The nationalist forces now prepared to push down from Aragon
to the Mediterranean.
As the republican troops retreated,
thousands of refugees streamed into Catalonia.
In Catalonia, the revolutionary battlecries now fell on deaf ears.
Only young militants like Teresa Pamies
kept their faith in a republican victory.
We had such an enthusiastic and romantic attitude,
that we didn't even notice how ridiculous we looked
when we climbed up lampposts and harangued all those
poor women and many children queuing up to buy a bit of bread.
We would shout from the lampposts that the fascists would not pass.
That we would win the war and all lead better and happier lives.
This may sound like demagoguery now,
but at that time we really felt it.
By February 1938,
the nationalist troops were marching towards the sea.
The offensive threatened Catalonia, the revolutionary heartland.
But there as in the rest of republican Spain,
the revolutionary spirit of 1936 was now only a memory.
On April 14th 1938,
nationalist troops reached the Mediterranean,
and the republic was cut in two.
As Franco's troops celebrated,
the republic summoned up its remaining energies
for a battle to prevent its final collapse.