Bolshevism is one thing and Anarchism is another. Last week Walter Duranty, No. 1 contemporary reporter on Bolshevism, had left Moscow to report in Barcelona upon Anarchism—the most interesting principle of Government to arise amid the civil war in Spain. Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a Spanish district so strongly Separatist that four years [...] »

The hotheaded, toothbrush-mustached Spanish Catalan, Luis Companys, became a rebel when he added to the chaos of Spain’s October 1934 revolution by declaring his native province, rich, industrial Catalonia, an independent republic. He became a martyr when the Government sent him to jail for 30 years. He became a hero when the Left victory in [...] »

What began last fortnight as Spain’s least bloody election in years was swelling last week into horrid crescendos of threatened social upheaval, secession and civil war. Overnight 30,000 political prisoners came bustling out of jail. They included the furious Catalonian secessionist, “President” Luis Companys, who had just begun to serve a 30-year stretch in a [...] »

Barcelona as usual went off completely halfcocked. Without waiting for definite news of the progress of the revolution elsewhere, impetuous Luis Companys. President of Catalonian Generalidad, climbed out on a balcony of the Government palace and proclaimed Catalonia a separate Republic. Government troops rushed down from the fortress and promptly besieged him. A few hours [...] »

On Jan. 6 the Three Wise Men leave presents in the shoes of Spanish children, to whom stocking-stuffing Santa Claus is a stranger. This week citizens of Barcelona had barely begun to buy toys when fire totally destroyed on Christmas Day the seven buildings of El Siglo, “Spain’s Largest Department Store” which was crammed with [...] »

Reign of Reason There was dancing in the streets in Barcelona last week, such a fiesta as not even the oldest Catalan could remember. By oxcart and on burro the peasants came in their red stockinet caps and baggy breeches. Leather-faced fishermen came up from Tarragona. All night long shouting crowds surged up & down [...] »

Without her industrial Catalonia and her thriving Basque country Spain would be like the U. S. without the North Atlantic seaboard and California. Yet last week the Republican Government at Madrid signed away most of its control over Catalonia which contains the country’s largest, most modern city, Barcelona. In Madrid the Cortes, 172 to 12, [...] »

The strange misshapen houses of which Barcelona is so proud were close shuttered and dark last week. No lights twinkled in the sloping Plaza Catalonia. Under the plane trees the boulevards were silent except for the clop-clop of cavalry patrols making their rounds and the sudden roar of an armored car. The Syndicalists, bane of [...] »

Overwhelming “yes” in referendum vote on regionalist statute project, ratified the following year by the Cortes. »

Once more last week Catalonians went to the polls and voted their desire for independence from Madrid. In the four Catalonian provinces (Barcelona, Lerida, Tarragona, Gerona) 173,000 voted for autonomy, 2,517 voted against it. It was a 70 to 1 victory for Col. Francisco Macia, wild-eyed “President” of Catalonia, a victory that he celebrated with [...] »