Foreign News: City Divided

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The world's first reaction to Barcelona's fall was perplexity. Why did a city of 2,000,000 people, the reddest town on earth outside Russia, surrender to the Fascists as soon as they reached the suburbs? The explanation was that a metropolis divided against itself—and hungry—also falls.

On the morning of Barcelona's capture, Radio Barcelona warned the approaching Rebels that the "city will be defended inch by inch, house by house, street by street." This bold talk reminded the world that Barcelona had smashed the local Fascist uprising in July 1936 with speed and vigor not duplicated anywhere else in Spain. The revolutionary Anarchists, Communists and Socialists—who had learned their discipline and their politics in the only large industrial centre in the country—proceeded to clear Catalonia of Franco forces and chase them half way across Aragon.

Then they stopped, like a mongrel dog pack, and began fighting among themselves. Anarchist hated Communist almost as much as he hated Rebel. Trotskyist bickered with Stalinist. Good bourgeoisie were horrified at the confiscation of private property. The Catalan autonomists resented even the least suggestion from Madrid.

To cross the French border into Catalonia at one time required passage through three independent sets of custom officers—Madrid's, Catalonia's, the Anarchists'. Supplies earmarked for transit through Catalonia for the Central Government were often waylaid.

The Catalan front in Aragon became scandalously inactive. So conspicuous was Barcelona's failure to wage effective warfare against the Fascists, either industrially or militarily, that a favorite, bitter Loyalist quip was that Catalonia, alone of 27 European nations, had lived faithfully up to the non-intervention agreement not to help either side in the Spanish War. In May 1937, Anarchists tried to seize Barcelona and the Central Government, then at Valencia, had to send troops to Catalonia to restore order.

Doubts. The politically-torn population soon faced the terrifying ordeal of hunger and air raids. By last autumn many an ardent antiFascist, his belly gnawed by hunger and his nerves frayed by bombs, began to wonder if, after all, the oppression of Fascism could be any worse. When, three days before Barcelona fell, the Loyalist Government called out all men to help build fortifications to withstand a siege, the city was war weary and apathetic. The job was quietly sabotaged. Many evaded the draft, many worked only halfheartedly. In the last few days before the fall, many Rebel sympathizers—the "Fifth Column"—openly showed their political feelings.

The night before the fall the censors told foreign correspondents that they would not be operating in Barcelona the next day. Dr. Negrin left in the middle of the night. What Loyalist battalions remained guarding the city vanished before daylight. It was all over.

When General Juan Yague's troops reached the 600-foot-high hill of Montjuich commanding Barcelona's harbor they saw a white flag flying from the fortress. When General Garcia Valino's soldiers climbed the summit of Tibidabo, on the west, and looked down upon the city gleaming in brilliant sunshine, they saw white sheets, towels and Rebel red & gold bunting flying from windows and housetops.