Historia de Barcelona

Categoría: TIME Magazine

  • Atentado del «neurasténico» Domènec Masachs Torrente contra Primo de Rivera

    Occasionally the old fashioned iron extinguisher of censorship clapped upon Spain by Dictator Premier Primo de Rivera springs a tiny leak, spurts a dark smoke puff of news. Last week the official version of what occurred when the Dictator visited Barcelona was that he «received an enthusiastic welcome . . . .»

    Actually one Domingo Masachs Torrent, 34, Communist, day laborer, had sharpened a sleek knife wherewith to welcome Primo de Rivera.

    As the Dictator’s car slowed to turn a corner the knife hurtled, grazed Prime’s left ear, penetrated two inches into the upholstery of the car ….

    Dictator Premier Primo de Rivera, no neurasthenic, drew the knife calmly from where it quivered, pocketed it, motioned his chauffeur to drive on.

    Would-be-assassin Domingo Masachs Torrent, markedly neurasthenic, did not notice in the excitement of shouting, «Down with you, tyrant!» a secret service car which swooped upon him, ran him down, broke his leg.

  • El golpe de Macià, financiado y traicionado por Ricciotti Garibaldi, un agente de Mussolini

    Plot, pounce

    The vivid staccato name of Garibaldi is synonymous with revolution and romance. Last week it seemed that a new Garibaldi, a grandson of the Liberator, had arisen to wade in glory. He is Colonel Ricciotti Garibaldi, Italian World War hero, officer of the Legion of Honor. For some months he has resided at Paris, the swashbuckling idol of expatriate Italian and Spanish anti-Fascists. Last week he put in the field 400 armed companions disguised as mountaineers who assembled in Southern France and attempted to march in force across the Spanish border.

    Midnight March

    The field commander for Colonel Garibaldi was that famed Catalonian patriot, Colonel Francisco Macia. For years he has striven to foment a revolution which should set his native Catalonia free from the dominance of Madrid. Last week he rode at midnight toward the Spanish frontier with a glad heart. Were not the invading 400 patriots equipped with rifles, machine guns, a medical corp, and even a strong box heavy with newly designed and minted Catalan money? All was prepared….

    Suddenly operatives of the French Secret Police, re-enforced by French infantry, pounced—arrested Colonels Garibaldi and Macia and most of their supporters.

    Double-Cross

    Following these wholesale arrests, the fruit of a year and more of sleuthing by the French police, the Spanish Government expressed its gratitude and its relief at this nipping of the plot upon French soil.

    The French police, calmly industrious, continued to investigate. They discovered documents which appeared to brand Colonel Garibaldi as an agent provocateur employed by the Italian Secret Service. His role has been to pose as an anti-Fascist and thus keep his employers informed of what plots were going forward among the Italian and Spanish foes of Dictators Benito Mussolini and Primo de Rivera.

    Allegedly the Spanish Government, warned by II Duce, held troops in readiness to pounce upon the invading army of Colonel Garibaldi and Colonel Macia last week, if it had ever crossed the frontier. In that event the «invaders» would have been shot, instead of reposing as they now do safe in French jails.

  • Una redada policial impide la venta de obras infantiles de Picasso

    However inane they may be, the youthful scrawls of a famed artist can usually be sold for big prices. Sincere artists usually object to this mercenary process. Recently Pablo Picasso was astonished to observe on the walls of Paris dealers some 400 of his works, most of which had been executed before the age of puberty. Excited dilettantes were lauding even the most execrable of the daubs. Revolted, Artist Picasso charged last week that the material had been obtained from his mother in Barcelona under false pretenses, filed a complaint charging fraud against persons unnamed, caused the Galeries Georges Bernheim and the Galeries Zak to be invaded by gendarmes who removed the offensive juvenilia. [TIME dated 1930/05/19. Actual date uncertain]

  • Dos mil niños paralizados por insolación en una comunión másiva en la Exposición

    One broiling Barcelona day last week 30,000 children marshaled by hundreds of priests gathered for an open air prayer festival at which it is a local custom to pray masked. Many and many a child sneaked off the sweltering mask during the long prayer, but all remained devoutly motionless kneeling under a grilling sun. When the prayer ended 28,000 tots rose and prepared to march away but 2,000 continued to kneel as though stupefied or paralyzed in the attitude of adoration. Doctors pronounced them sunstruck. Several hundred had to be rushed to hospitals, all were expected to recover.

  • Partido boxeo Primo Carnera – Paulino Uzcudun

    From 75,000 people—reputedly the biggest crowd that ever watched a sporting event in Spain—a roar went up. Paulino Uzcudun, Basque woodchopper who for several years has been an exacting and dangerous trial horse for U. S. heavyweights, rushed out of his corner in Montjuich Stadium, Barcelona, and tried to hit Primo Camera, Italian Brobdingnag. His swing was short. Camera stretched out a long left hand and set him back on his heels. Squat, hairy-chested, his gold teeth gleaming in his dwarfish face, Paulino in his perpetual crouch, with his elbows swinging, resembled some kind of beetle that Camera, punching almost vertically, was trying to crush. He sidestepped many of Camera’s left leads but could not get out of the way of the ponderous rights aimed at his body. Camera could slap down his guard and plank a punch over. He did not seem at first to be trying very hard. In the eighth round the referee warned him for hitting low, but by that time Paulino was bleeding from the mouth and right eye. When the decision was properly given to Camera, the crowd, not knowing much about fighting, but liking Paulino for his nerve and nationality, booed heartily. [Actually «Carnera». TIME dated 1930/12/08]

  • El anarcosindicalismo, la maldición de la jóven república

    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 the young republic, were out on a general strike. No milk was delivered, no garbage collected. Electric light and gas lines were cut. No trolleys ran. Violence started when Civil Governor Anguero visited the jail to plead with 51 hunger-striking Syndicalists to eat. The prisoners, who in some way had obtained guns, replied by firing a few wild shots, collecting all the furniture in the jail and making a bonfire of it. Riot squads rushed in to quiet them.

    Disgusted, Governor Anguera refused to put police patrols on the street cars.

    «While so-called respectable citizens merrily uphold Syndicalist assassins they can walk, so far as I am concerned,» said Governor Anguera.

    Stinking heaps of refuse piled up in the streets. Rioters in the suburbs uprooted tracks and dug deep trenches across the roads. For many hours Barcelona was completely out of touch with Madrid. A noisy, long-drawn battle was waged between police and Syndicalists in front of the latter’s headquarters. They gave up when mountain guns were unlimbered across the street. Sailors rushed a hundred of them on board warships in the harbor. A volley of shots rang out from doorways facing the tree-lined Rambla Flores, sloping down to the harbor. A Civil Guard whirled on his heel and fell, seriously wounded, among the flower pots and twittering bird cages of the market.

    In two days at least 20 people were shot dead, 40 wounded. Borrowing an idea from Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, hundreds of frightened strikers’ wives paraded through the streets behind a banner «Children Before Politics» and declared a wives’ strike of their own, swearing that their husbands should have neither food nor affection until they went back to work.

    Other Syndicalist ladies were not so soft. While hundreds of frightened Barcelonians gathered for safety in the ancient Gothic cathedral, a gang of wild-eyed Amazons broke in, climbed high in the lantern over the West Front and began sniping at soldiers and police from the roof while Barcelona’s sacred geese squawked horribly in the cloister.

    All this time Catalonia’s «President» Macia, who owes his election largely to Syndicalist votes, did nothing. But as the bloodshed continued even he became affected.

    «I am not disposed to tolerate the situation another day,» said Col. Macia.

    [TIME dated 1931/09/14. Actual date uncertain]

  • Llega Azaña con el Estatuto de Autonomía; se confunde el logotipo de Shell con la bandera catalana

    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 under the huge plane trees of the ramblas to rigadoon round the statue of Christopher Columbus and back up the hill again. From a thousand staffs fluttered the five-barred red-&-yellow Catalonian flag. Trucks of Shell Oil Co. were hailed with delight.

    All this was caused when quiet, bespectacled Premier Manuel Azana of Spain came to town to hand white-toothed «President» Francisco Macia of Catalonia a copy of the statute granting home rule to Catalonia.

    «Everything depends upon how you use this liberty,» warned Premier Azana. «For the sake of Catalonia and Spain, be careful!»

    Pink with pleasure, Colonel Macia waved his hands excitedly and shouted:

    «The Catalans can feel now they are true sons of a country rich in glorious tradition. I interpret the sentiments of all of them, when I say that Sept. 25, 1932 will be recorded on the pages of history as ushering in a reign of reason and justice on Iberian soil.»

    Crowds standing in the square before the high porticoed Generalidad burst into El Segredores, the once proscribed Catalonian anthem, roared loudest at the verse about cutting off the heads of the proud Castilians. Manuel Azana grinned good naturedly. Even the white geese in the Cathedral cloister honked their loudest.

    [Dateline 1932/10/03]

  • Un incendio destroza «El Siglo»

    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 toys against the coming of the Three Wise Men.

    Barcelona firemen arrived at 11 a. m., coupled hoses to fire hydrants. There was only a trickle. It took a full hour for the Barcelona Water Works to get up fighting pressure. By that time El Siglo was a $4,000,000 bonfire, belching hundreds of feet in air, impossible to extinguish. When firemen were finally able to fight, the best they could do was wet down nearby buildings including El Banco Hispano Colonial from which cash, securities and gold had been hastily removed.

    [Published 1933/01/02]

  • Tras las elecciones, huida burguesa, amenazas de secesión, caos social y guerra civil

    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 grim Andalusian prison for having proclaimed the industrial northeast of Spain the independent Republic of Catalonia (TIME, Oct. 15, 1934). Out of jail popped most of this suppressed Republic’s Parliament and met in Barcelona, their capital. In Madrid more or less delirious Spanish mobsters and political ex-convicts paraded around, brandishing plain red flags, singing the Internationale and shouting vaguely «Long Live Russia!»

    Every train to the French frontier was jammed with taut-faced people. «Who are they?» a correspondent asked a station official at the frontier. «Dukes, marquises and millionaires!» replied the station official correctly.

  • «Companys consigue la autonomía para Cataluña»

    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 the Spanish general election last month sent him and 30,000 other rebels of 1934 rollicking out of Spain’s jails. This week he became a liberator when he wangled from Spain’s Republican Premier Manuel Azaña «local autonomy» for Catalonia. In Spain old issues never die, and States’ Rights is the deathless battle cry of Catalonia & Companys.

  • Anarquía en Barcelona

    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 ago it won from Madrid a partial independence recently made complete (TIME, Aug. 31). Last week there was a chance that the Catalonian Communists may get the upper hand and establish a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Likewise there was a chance that momentarily powerless Luis Companys, the Left Republican President of Catalonia, may regain control. But for the time being Barcelona was in the hands of Anarchists and its interesting condition could therefore be described as Anarchy.

  • TIME: las batallas internas de los nacionalistas e izquierdistas complican la lucha

    That no simple civil war of two Spains, Leftists and Rightists, is being fought, made itself clear again last week as some other Spains became active afresh, notably the Basques and the Catalonians. These regions are violently separatist, even when Spain is at peace. The fact that today Catalonians and Basques are both classed as being with the Leftists of Valencia and Madrid makes them no less rugged individualists.

    In Barcelona, the capital of more or less autonomous Catalonia (through which supplies for Madrid enter Spain in a steady stream), local President Luis Companys umpired a heroic political dogfight in which the Cabinet of this one of the Spains fell. At last Barcelona’s quarreling hot anarchists & communists and warmed-over socialists & republicans grew so helplessly embroiled that most of them seemed relieved when President Companys agreed last week to add the Premiership of Catalonia temporarily to his other offices and worries. Dispatches reaching Valencia said that what had chiefly been accomplished at Barcelona was to «oust the anarchists from their previous control of the police.»

  • Comunismo, separatismo, anarquismo

    Companys & Co.

    The Spanish spotlight, focused for the past month on the Basque capital at Bilbao, swung last week to Barcelona, greatest industrial city in Spain and chief port remaining in Leftist hands. Catalan Barcelona, like Basque Bilbao, is the capital of a group of Spain’s 50 provinces, which since the Revolution have tended to become more & more autonomous. Unlike Bilbao, Barcelona has not been seriously threatened by Rightists since the first weeks of the civil war.

    Rugged individualists like most Spaniards, the Barcelonians have decked their buildings with many a discordant banner: the five-barred red-&-yellow flag of Catalonia, the red-yellow-&-purple of the Valencia Republic, the red flag of Communism, the black-&-red banner of Anarcho-Syndicalists. There are a number of other parties of varying opinions, all demanding a share in the Government. Nowhere else in the world are Communists so decisively ranked among the conservatives. That is because in Catalonia, Communists believe in discipline, as opposed to the free-for-all philosophy of the pure Anarchists, largest and most troublesome group in the state. The main reason that government is possible at all in Catalonia is due to the extraordinary talent for compromise of Catalonia’s president, excitable Luis Companys. President Companys has been in & out of jails much of his political career, has long fought for Catalan independence, speaks of Spain as «the Iberian Peninsula.» His technique with his spluttering allies is to promise them everything with the greatest goodwill. This worked moderately well for many months in keeping peace in Barcelona, but did nothing at all to help the hard-pressed Leftist armies fight the war. President Companys was too busy keeping peace at home to send many men to the front.

    Suddenly last week the Companys technique did not work at all. Late at night telephone communications with France were mysteriously cut. Hours later the story began to filter out of Barcelona that Anarchists had revolted against the Companys Government. Almost instantly jumbled barricades sprang up along the tree-lined Ramblas. The streets echoed with the Carong! Carong! of machine guns, the Hahp! of light artillery. Immediate objective of the Anarchist Black-&-Reds was the Barcelona telephone exchange, a building almost as imposing as the telephone skyscraper of Madrid. This they seized and held for seven hours. Hero of the revolt then became Barcelona’s Police Chief Rodriguez Sola, who personally led a frontal attack on the building, captured the first floor, methodically started mopping up from stair to stair.

    Loudly President Companys called for peace and unity to face the common foe, warned that the Catalans were leaving the way open for a raid from General Franco’s Rightists. No such raid came, but before peace was restored over 300 people had been killed and according to reports the Valencia Government, to police Barcelona, had had to withdraw 12.000 badly needed troops from the Aragon front. Heretofore careful to avoid mixing in local Catalan squabbles, Valencia also moved in General Sebastian Pozas to be military commander of Catalonia.

    […]

  • Largo Caballero y Companys, decididos a derrotar a los anarquistas

    The entire effectiveness of the Leftist Government has been in the series of compromises making it possible for a mixed salad of political parties to work in some sort of harmony. Immediately behind last week’s Cabinet crisis was the brief Anarchist revolt in Barcelona of fortnight ago (TIME. May 17). Premier Largo Caballero and President Luis Companys of Catalonia are both secretly determined to put the Anarchists, most hot-headed of Leftist groups, in their places, but the Anarchists are politically potent.

  • Companys deniega permiso a los anarquistas para conmemorar el aniversario del inicio de la Guerra Civil

    Catalonian anarchists supporting the Leftist Government of Premier Dr. Juan Negrin asked leave to stage anti-Fascist rallies and parades on the first birthday of Spain’s civil war last week, but were sternly repressed. Catalonia’s President Luis Companys cared to risk no street riots among his Communist, Anarchist, Socialist and Republican supporters, and anyhow Leftist Spain was grimly straining every resource in its first large offensive of the war.

  • Citando a Ignacio de Loyola, el gobierno español se muda a Barcelona

    … for the first time in modern history, a Spanish Government moved to Barcelona, the second move of the Leftist Government since the war started. Plenty of government bureaus remained in overcrowded Valencia. Signaling the move, Minister of the Interior Julian Zugazagoita made a radio speech containing two statements, neither of which would have been possible year ago when the Leftist Government first moved to Valencia:

    «The Government planned to go to Barcelona as early as last November but decided temporarily on Valencia. . . . Barcelona now in its turn has the significance of showing the clear fidelity of the Government toward Catalonia.

    «The Government is not obliged to appeal for obedience, but has the right to impose it. … We have come to agree with the sage formula of that exceptional captain of Christ, Saint Ignatius de Loyola, who imposed on his disciples silent obedience ‘until death.’ The task must be accomplished. We must win by our own strength alone.»

    Last November an admission that the Madrid Government dared not move to the then anarchist-ridden Catalan Barcelona, or words of praise for the founder of the powerful, much-feared Jesuit order, would have been tantamount to treason.

  • Llegan 10 aviones de Stalin

    Thrifty Joseph Stalin belatedly bet another blue chip on the Spanish Loyalists last week in the form of ten splendid Soviet warplanes. Tons of other Soviet war paraphernalia have reached the Leftists in the past month via France. Amid wild cheering in recently bombed Barcelona, Soviet war birds in mass formation darkened the sky and last week the Leftist Cabinet reorganized itself for a last-minute effort to crawl between the jaws of defeat and wrench out the tonsils of victory.

  • Cómo Gran Bretaña puede aprender de los bombardeos de Barcelona

    To drive home how enormously more horrible the next World War will be than its predecessor, Professor Haldane cited cold figures: «Between January 1917 and November 1918, German aeroplanes dropped 71 tons of bombs on England. These killed 837 people. . . . On March 16-19, 1938, 41 tons of bombs were dropped on Barcelona by German and Italian aeroplanes. They killed about 1,300 people.»

    Thus, had the bombing of Barcelona continued at this maximum intensity for even one full week, both the total weight of bombs dropped and the total casualties in this city would have considerably exceeded what all England suffered in its worst 95 weeks of actual war. Measured thus coldly, the «horrors of bombing» have increased in 20 years nearly 10,000%.

    […]

    «The first air raids may not be on Central London at all but on the traffic jams around it,» warns Professor Haldane. «In Spain, at any rate, the German airmen seem to prefer to attack concentrated traffic, whether on wheel or on foot, rather than to bomb buildings, when they have the choice. … In Barcelona one dives for the nearest shelter, leaving one’s car in the street with the ignition key in place, so that it may be used by officials if necessary. … I would far rather be in Central London during a big air raid than in a traffic jam on the Barnet Bye-Pass or the Great West Road.»

  • Falta de confianza en los mercados después de la toma de Barcelona

    The stockmarket fell last week three days before Barcelona. Stock prices had been weak since the first of the year and when last week’s break came they were already back at what Dow theorists call «resistance levels» (146 for Dow-Jones industrial averages, 28.8 for railroads) set by the previous reaction in November and December. Both industrial and railroad averages plummeted through these levels on heavy trading volume.

    With most of Europe convinced that the fall of Barcelona was not the end of the trouble but perhaps the real beginning, war-scare was doubtless primarily to blame for the break. Brokers reported heavy liquidation from abroad. Acute weakness in foreign dollar issues led bond prices down. The Dutch guilder was weak. And, as always when Europe has the jitters, the heavy flow of gold to the U. S. quickened. In one day last week London arranged to ship £14,000,000.

  • 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.»