Una «operación policial» sustituye a la guerra civil

Early this week Loyalist resistance in northern Catalonia collapsed, and in a swift advance northward from Gerona the Rebel Armies of Generalissimo Francisco Franco occupied Figueras, for eleven days the fourth capital of Loyalist Spain. As last as their transport could keep up with them, they bore down on the frontier towns of Port-Bou, La Junquera and Puigcerda. It was only a matter of hours before the Generalissimo would wipe out the only remaining Loyalist territory in northern Spain and be master of the Spanish side of the French-Spanish frontier from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean. A Republican official told correspondents the Rebels’ offensive was no longer a military operation, it was «a police job.»