CHAPTER 9

Barcelona on the Barricades (1936)

When the Paris express changed at the frontier into a Spanish train which stopped at even the smallest stations, and later, when the military guard on the train and the workers’ guard on the Moncada station covered the train with their guns, nobody, of all the tourists and visitors and athletes going to the Barcelona Workers’ Olympiad, knew what was happening.

I had been sent to cover the first People’s Olympiad in Barcelona by the London magazine Life and Letters To-Day.1 It was to be the great anti-Nazi celebration of the workers’ sports clubs of Europe and America, the retort to Hitler Olympics, a week of united front games, theater, festival. The games were to start that evening, with a torchlight procession through Barcelona.

The guidebook says, “There is nothing in Moncada that need detain the tourist, who would do well to proceed to the capital, Barcelona.” Some of us got out and looked at the town. The Catalonians had settled down to bread and sausages, wine and peaches and almonds. The tourists were noticeably flustered: an express train that stops for two hours at an insignificant way station!

In the town, a camión of young boys, most of them no more than seventeen years old, was leaving for Barcelona.2 We heard that there had been a tremendous battle, starting that morning with an attack on the telephone building, and continuing through the day. The generals, the priests, the wealth of the country, had risen against the people and a people’s left-wing government, uniting with the Carlists in a savage attempt to make a fascist, if not a monarchist, Spain.3

The camión went off. The boys stood quite still as it left the town. They had said they were Anarchists.4 One of the athletes clenched his fist in greeting. One of the mothers screamed, begging her son not to go. No two of their guns matched: old firearms, hunting rifles, revolvers. The camión went down the road to Barcelona, its radio playing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

During the afternoon, rumors ran through the train, the beginning of days of contradictory news: the army would put this down by nightfall, it was an Anarchist uprising. Two thousand had been killed at Barcelona, the tracks were torn up, it was a Communist uprising, the government could put it down immediately, the train would move during the evening, the train would move at seven o’clock.

Only these things became certain: the wires were down, no communication was possible; the train lying dead in the station, with the town promenading on the platform and the little children climbing trees to look in the windows, was the one neutral place in town.

At dinnertime, men came walking back from the battle in Barcelona, fifteen miles away. A bus driver walked in with his wounded brother and their families, carrying stories of the tremendous battle; now we could hear the role of the artillery fire growing ever louder in the hills. The hill-pocket around Moncada is on the direct line to the frontier—the direct line of retreat for the fascists, who were broken after the day’s fierce fighting, scattered and driven into hiding in the city or the hills.

In the evening, the Americans set up a train committee to take a message of sympathy and thanks for the town’s courtesy and a small collection to the Mayor. The town had been very kind; the only search made was for cameras and photographs of armed civilians, and that had frightened only a few people on their way to the bullfights; those who did not agree with the sympathies of the message said cheerfully that it was politic and would ensure them a quiet night. The chorus of six platinum blondes who were to have opened in Barcelona that night was heartbroken but soothed. The professor from Madrid translated our message into Spanish, and we took it into the town.

Moncada is usually quiet, I suppose, but during these nights the radio, the sign that the government was still in power, roared from the cafés; war news, bulletins, the death of General Sanjurjo, the broadcast forced on the fascist general, after his capture.5 We took the note to the mayor, who refused it. He said it was too important for him; to take it to the secretariat. The committee received it in a hot, bright room with the picture of Lluís Companys, president of Catalonia, looking down. We were not then allowed to express sympathies; we were foreign nationals, and it was correct that we keep out of revolutionary situations. We went back to sleep on the seats of the Madrid-Saragossa-Alicante line.

Waking at 4:45 next morning to the brief sharp sounds of rifle-fire crackling in the hills, we were out on the platform in time for the deep detonation that meant the church had been bombed. Five fascist officers had been executed that morning; some said they had died cravenly, others that they had died bravely.

Other rumors flew about. But all the reports tallied to one sum: the fascists were retreating through the hills.

Trucks loaded with guns and ammunition hurried through the town, carrying the painted initials of their trade-union organizations, or of the Anarchists. A machine-gun rolled through after the milk-wagon. A Red funeral was held. The train was given an hour and a half to buy provisions, and was ordered to shut itself in—the fascists were expected.

All day there was shooting and chase in the hills. A shot smacked against the tile roof of a peasant’s house; almost before I could turn, the inhabitants were inside, piling furniture against the doors and windows. “There has been fighting before,” they said, walled into the little house, “but never like this.”

That evening the first plane passed overhead as we all stood watching before the schoolhouse, which had been allotted to us. It came from over the hills, where short men with sandals and black sashes and rifles were hunting fascists; it was impossible to tell whether the plane was friend or fascist, scout or bomber. After a terrible, long minute it passed harmlessly overhead.

And that night the Guardia Civil was stationed to protect the train while machine-gun fire clattered in the town.6

Moncada, being just outside Barcelona, is afflicted with absentee landlordship, and a row of imposing houses facing the station are owned by fascist sympathizers who live in the capital. A small group of armed citizens entered these houses, forcing the locks or going in by the windows, to collect weapons. There was not a sign of thievery or the looting that has been reported. One little boy about six years old ran down the street with three towels under his arm. His mother caught him halfway down, spanked him soundly, and came back with the towels and a noisy scolding for the leader who had permitted it.

Watching uneasily from the windows of the stifling train, the tourists felt it was time to be going. The English started to organize an international group to walk through the gun-filled hills to Barcelona.

But that afternoon order began to appear in the restless sensitized town. The clenched fist was seen for the first time everywhere, in the streets and thrust from the armored cars. The Party cars arrived, and all those connected with the Workers’ Olympics were taken in open trucks with one armed guard in the truck and one with the driver.7 Our suitcases were piled up for fortification; we were told to duck when shot at. The Party man from Barcelona spoke on the necessity for discipline and Party order, instructing the guards not to shoot until it was necessary. There were barricades all along the road—the walls of the farms were piled with bales of hay along the top. People were hiding behind wagons turned over on their sides. They greeted us with clenched fists; so did the traffic cops and the gypsies.

As we got nearer the city we saw them tearing up paving stones for barricades. There were houses flying white flags. In the city itself there were barricades almost every hundred yards, and the cars were stopped so that people could be identified. There were machine-gun nests behind many of the barricades. The government service had organized food provision. Everything was shut down except for the apothecary shops, which were ordered ready for emergencies; the hospitals were open.

Coming into Barcelona we saw shooting along the streets. The driver took the long way around the city to the Hotel Olympic on the Plaza España, which had been requisitioned for people connected with the Workers’ Olympiad. Mattresses were put down on the floor for the two thousand athletes. The Hotel was converted into a refuge for foreigners. One Frenchman had lost his team at the border. I could never find the man who was managing the publicity for the Olympics because he was always out on the street fighting with the People’s Front. We were taken to dinner that night in an automobile spangled with bullet holes, the upholstery stained with blood; the officials apologized for the condition of the car, explaining that there had been fighting that day.

That night all teams held meetings to decide whether to stay in Spain or not. All had great majorities in favor of staying. However, the French had orders that they were to go back. We felt that it was right for them to go, that the Popular Front in France and Spain must be preserved at all costs.

The next morning everybody who could was asked to leave the Hotel Olympic and make any arrangements possible in town. I went to look for the American and English teams who had rooms in hotels. On the way over, I stopped at the American consulate, and learned that the consul, Drew Franklin, had been approached by Lluís Companys, who told him he could not be responsible for any foreigners’ lives. At the consulate, they were willing to give us safe conduct to the border, but safe conduct meant nothing, as they would not supply boats and it would have been suicide to attempt to leave in cars. The three Hollywood people from the train, two newsreel men and an executive, got away, issuing pro-fascist statements along the road. We got no recognition from the consulate because the team was not backed by an athletic association in this country; neither did we get any recognition as citizens.8 On the American team were eleven boys, mostly baseball players, all from New York, except for one boxer from Pittsburgh. Henson and Chamberlain were the heads of the team.9

The people in Barcelona felt that everything would be all right if other countries would not interfere. Then German and Italian gun-boats began to come around. The lineup among the nationalities became clear: the French, Russian, and Spanish on one side, and the English, German, and Italian on the other.

The French team left on Wednesday afternoon. One of their athletes had been killed. The two French boats slowly pulled away down the harbor, alive with singing as the thousands on the boats raised clenched fists to sing the “Internationale” along with the hundreds on shore.10 To a great cry of “Les Soviets partout!” the French left.11

And all during that night and the days after, the dark, unprotected armies left for Saragossa, the heaviest fascist stronghold; two Hungarians, a Belgian, and at least ten anti-fascist Germans joined that workers’ army, and I have heard from them since then: they write to say, outside Saragossa, their morale is strong, and the People’s Front they defend is invincible.12

On Thursday, the athletes and the groups with them marched halfway through Barcelona in a tremendous demonstration with the people’s army, all wearing strips of black for that week’s dead. As the army passed, team after team sang the “Internationale”: Norwegian, Dutch, English, Belgian, German, Italian, Hungarian, American. Later, knowing that Italian money and guns were behind the fascists in Spain, and that a machine-gun had sprayed the street in front of the Italian consulate before it was burned, an Italian boy shouted to the people: “The Italian people are with you, watching your victory—and when we get our chance—!” The rest was drowned in a burst of vivas and cheering.

But at the second demonstration we were given our responsibility as foreign nationals when Martín, the organizer of the games, said, “You came to see games, and have remained to witness the triumph of our People’s Front. Now your task is clear; you will go back to your countries and spread through the world the news of what you have seen in Spain.”13

In Sète, where we arrived en route to France, Sunday is fête-day; and the feudal games are held. A red-and-white boat, with its piper and drummer, its team in white on a ladder topped by the jouster, wooden lance and shield ready, advances down the canal, to the old music, to tilt at a blue-and-white boatload.

And, as they meet in the medieval joust, in the rain or sunlight, with the antique music, they raise their clenched fists in a new salute.

(New Masses, 1936)