On January 26 1939, in the third year of the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde finally took Barcelona. In March he took Madrid and in April he and his nationalist, royalist, ruling class forces controlled Spain. Franco established a repressive, elitist, anti-worker regime which would last until his death in 1975.
This photograph (2006) from my own collection is of the Telephone (Telegraph) Building on the perimeter of Plaza Cataluna in Barcelona, at the upper end of the Ramblas. In May 1937 it was held by anarchist/ republican forces in a battle eloquently described by George Orwell in 'Homage to Catalonia'. Next time you're mixing it with the entertainers on the Ramblas, and deciding on a cafe for coffee, take instead this image: 'The bullets from the tower were flying cross the street and a crowd of panic-stricken people was rushing down the Ramblas, away from the firing; up and down the street you could hear snap-snap-snap as the shop-keepers slammed the steel shutters over their windows.' (Orwell, 1938).
Lest we forget.
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