If You Think Francisco Franco Is Dead, Think Again
History overshadows all as Catalonia seeks its future
BARCELONA — For a time, the Spanish government outlawed the color yellow here.
It seemed as far as the Spanish Electoral Council was concerned, amarillo (or groc in Catalan) was a color too controversial, too inflammatory, too rebellious for those who want to remain part of Spain.
This sounds like a French farce, but it is Spain — well, to be precise it is Catalonia as it wrestles with Spain. It’s yet another chapter in a decades-old struggle where the needle of politics swings wildly back and forth between “Horrifying” and “Absurd,” and history is everything.
The local members of the Partido Popular — the PP, the party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and the majority party in Spain — complained that displays in Barcelona using the color yellow were an affront to the PP’s call for unity. They also alleged that yellow violated the neutrality that city officials were supposed to embrace during the December 21 parliamentary elections Rajoy ordered.
Rajoy made the move in the wake of an October 1 independence referendum. He and the Madrid government applied direct rule on Catalonia for defying Spain’s constitution, firing the Catalonian Parliament and jailing 10 pro-independence politicians and activists on charges ranging from sedition to money laundering.
As politicians languished in prison, Catalans took action. What some men and women do with poetry or greeting cards, Catalans did with the color yellow.
Yellow signs popped up everywhere: Llibertat presos politics — “Free our political prisoners,” in Catalan. Public buildings and fountains were bathed in yellow light. Even Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, had a yellow banner placed in the council chambers.
But that was far too much for those who want unity. No matter: This was a hill, a yellow hill that Catalans were willing to die on.
Soon, many Catalans sported tiny yellow ribbons on their clothing. Pro-independence social media was awash in yellow. And whenever they could, pro-independence Catalans tied thousands of plastic yellow ribbons on fences, on park benches, and on bike racks.
“It’s ridiculous to think you can ban a color,” said Joan Ramon, a director for Channel 3, a public television station in Barcelona. “You can’t make a color go away, just like you can’t make political ideals go away.”
So on a fence in front of a school on the Carrer de Sant Pau in El Raval, a working class barrio where most people don’t have the middle-class luxury of time for political activism, dozens tied yellow ribbons and posted signs reading, “Free our political prisoners.” They dipped their feet in yellow paint and left footprints on the pavement — a symbol of the long, hard walk Catalans have made since the 1930s toward the dream of nationhood.
Nobody knows if they will ever arrive. Pro-independence parties won a slim majority in the December parliamentary elections — a stunning blow to Rajoy and the PP, who thought they would decapitate the independence movement.
But even enthusiastic supporters of independence say any change in Catalonia’s status is years away. All they can do is keep walking.
I went to Barcelona because I am fascinated both as a journalist and as a historian with the quest for national independence. Perhaps the struggle for nationhood resonates with me because I am well-aware of how difficult it was for the United States to win its own liberty.
Catalonia is not the United States, but many there will tell you that Americans and Catalans have something in common: Both revolutions were founded in part on a tax revolt.
Starting in the early 20th Century, Barcelona developed a vibrant industrial economy based mostly on textile manufacture that separated it from the profound poverty of the rest of agrarian Spain. Today, tourism and commercial interests in Barcelona account for 19 percent of the Spanish GDP and Catalonia is known as the cash cow of the Spanish tax base.
However, many Catalans resent that their wealth is used to subsidize the poorer areas of Spain with little for them in return. In addition, there are long-simmering resentments against Madrid, the seat of central power that has crushed Catalonia’s political and cultural aspirations since early 20th Century.
“Madrid nos roba” — “Madrid robs us.” The ghosts of Boston insurrectionists who in life muttered “No taxation without representation” during the Stamp Act crisis might well nod their spectral heads in understanding.
People still struggling to understand the significance of Barcelona and the surrounding region of Catalonia would do well to compare it to a similar place in the United States: San Francisco and the Bay Area. (In fact, San Francisco and Barcelona have been “sister cities” since 2010.)
Both cities are seaport towns. For two millennia, Barcelona has been an important gateway to the Mediterranean Sea, the Mare Nostrum of the Greco-Roman world and a sea lane of communication so important that great empires such as Britain and the United States fought hard to keep it under their control. During the Cold War, the U.S. Sixth Fleet used Barcelona as a major port-of-call in an effort to keep the Soviet Navy bottled up — a military relationship that lasted 37 years even though Spain was not a NATO ally until 1982.
Both cities possess stark social contrasts. Enjoying a Mediterranean climate (literally), many wealthy families live in homes with red-tile roofs surrounded by vineyards or on hillsides above Barcelona. A passenger on a flight into El Prat Airport might think he or she was passing over Mill Valley or Sausalito while on final descent to San Francisco International Airport.
But there are also freeways and streets jammed with traffic — despite the fact Barcelona has a well-developed and reliable underground Metro system and city buses to serve its 1.7 million inhabitants. San Francisco may have BART, but both cities have a multitude of drivers who maintain a love affair with their automobiles.
Gentrification divides the two cities. In the weeks immediately before the election, well-to-do Barcelona Christmas shoppers purchased expensive fashions and high-end electronics from stores and retail plazas that had once been buildings in working-class neighborhoods. For example, El Raval is the rough-and-tumble home of significant cultural sites like the MACBA contemporary art museum but also a place where prostitutes and pickpockets frequently ply their trades. Yet, El Raval has a gritty vibrancy and authentic resolve that marks many ordinary barcelonins wherever they live in the city.
Like San Francisco, Barcelona is the de facto LGBT-capital of its nation. Even with the residual influence of Catholicism throughout Spain and the church’s fierce opposition to gay rights, Barcelona’s reputation as a top tourist attraction and its early embrace of same-sex marriage in 2005 give it the reputation of being one of the most tolerant cities in Europe. The L’Eixample district of Barcelona is often nicknamed “Gaixample” because of its thriving gay and lesbian social life, but the sight of a same-sex couple kissing anywhere in Barcelona will rarely raise an eyebrow.
Barcelona also has a long-standing reputation for unapologetically radical politics. Starting in the late 19th Century, an influx of immigrants from within and without Spain who were hungry for jobs combined with the poverty and social stratification so common at the time to create a hotbed for anarchists, communists, and republicans. Both violence and democratic forces were unleashed in Catalonia after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Bombings, assassinations, arson, and mob attacks became common, and during the ’20s and ’30s the streets of Barcelona were so violent the city acquired two nicknames. One was “The Chicago on the Mediterranean.” The other was La Rosa de Foc — “The Rose of Fire.”
Radical unionism also took hold. The anarchist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo soon had more than 80 percent of Barcelona’s workers on its rolls. Though ruthlessly opposed by the Spanish military dictatorship of the 1920s, the CNT thrived while anarchism as a political and labor movement was dying out throughout the rest of Europe. In 1931, Catalonia declared itself an independent state, only to have independence stripped from its people in the Spanish Civil War.
Obviously, a vigorous Catalonian independence movement exists to this day. What is less-known outside of the region is leftist politics is also alive and well. In Barcelona, there is a well-stocked (and popular) anarchist bookstore called La Rosa de Foc. It is next door to the CNT headquarters in Barcelona. Both fly the red and black banner of anarchism at their respective locations. Neither is out of place in the modern mix of Catalonian politics.
But San Francisco never had the hatred of a fascist dictator leveled on its very existence. One old saying states history doesn’t repeat itself, but it echoes. In Barcelona, the echoes are deafening and they shout one name: Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
Outside of Spain, Franco is largely the “forgotten Fascist” of World War II. Spain’s military dictator from 1939 until his death in 1975, Franco’s treatment of Barcelona and the Catalan people was hideous. Starting in 1940, he ordered purges of anyone or any group he considered political enemies or “Reds”: anarchists, republicans, intellectuals, feminists, and those who simply displeased the regime.
In addition, the Catalonian independence movement was a thorn in the side of Fascist Spain from the 1930s onward. “Catalan nationalism is a disease that must be eradicated,” said Ramón Serrano Suñer, Franco’s foreign minister and brother-in-law. “The Catalan people are morally and politically sick.”
The Franco regime banned the public use of spoken Catalan. City, town, and street names were changed to Spanish. The thriving Catalonian publishing and media industry was nearly destroyed. Thousands of teachers were fired from schools and replaced with ideologically reliable hacks. If a Catalan was caught reading a book in his or her language or speaking the mother tongue, gangs of soldiers or police would beat the offender to a pulp. Through the 1960s, anyone attempting independent political organization or opposition to the regime faced the same treatment — or worse.
Barcelona was transformed from a thriving, outward-looking city interested in culture and progress into a drab, terrified industrial metropolis where people without the right political connections couldn’t find a job or enough to eat. Many of them were women — forcing single mothers desperate to feed their children to turn to prostitution in order to survive. Parts of working class Barcelona didn’t recover from the war until the 1960s. Some places bombed out or destroyed during the Civil War were purposely left in ruins under orders from Franco as a warning to “the Reds.”
In short, the greatest obstacle to Catalonian independence might be the past — a past most of Spain fails to confront, but many Catalonians believe they live with every day.
One of the places that survived the Civil War is Bar Marsella. It is the oldest watering hole in Barcelona, an accomplishment in a city known for both a multitude of bars and occasional bouts of devastation: Napoleon Bonaparte was still alive when it opened in 1820.
It’s most famous literary denizen was Ernest Hemingway, who leaned against the marble-topped counter and quaffed absinthe while scribbling his reports on the war. But Dali and Picasso also reportedly hoisted a few there.
Because of Hemingway and absinthe, Bar Marsella always ends up mentioned in tour guides and travel features. The word constantly used to describe the place is “louche,” but that’s not fair.
Like so many places in El Raval, Bar Marsella has an air of lingering seediness. There is paint peeling from the bar’s walls, dust an inch thick, and bottles of booze that are older than God. But it is in a working-class neighborhood proud of its roots.
Many people wander in after the bar opens for their morning cortado or café con leche. That includes the occasional iaia (roughly pronounced “ya-ya,” the Catalan word for “granny”) who will sit at a table in the bar and quietly sip her coffee.
One of the barkeeps is named Guzman. He is a Pakistani who is all-too-aware that his native land is war-torn.
El Raval is an oasis that took him in 16 years ago. It is where he was able to make a fresh start.
“I lived a few years in Belgium and Germany before here,” Guzman said. “It was a hard life.
Guzman said Barcelona is “muy bienvenida” — “very welcoming.”
“Does anyone ever talk about Franco?” I ask.
“People will talk one-on-one about Franco,” Guzman said. “In groups, it’s rare, particularly if they are old ones.”
Two Frenchmen from Montpelier order absinthe. The traditional way to consume absinthe is to serve it in a glass that has a sugar cube suspended on the rim in an absinthe spoon. The drinker then drips ice-cold water on the sugar cube, creating an opalescent concoction that releases “the green fairy.”
But since they intend to drink like a couple of Belle Époque bohemians they want to ignite the absinthe-soaked sugar cube — a rather risky exercise because of the high alcohol content of absinthe and the likelihood they might light themselves on fire.
Each of them keeps flicking his Bic but the sugar cube won’t ignite. I keep an eye on them, waiting for an open flame to drop into a glass of licorice-flavored rocket fuel.
One of them catches me eyeing his attempts to play with fire. “D’où viens-tu?” he asks.
“Je suis un journaliste américain ici pour faire un reportage sur les élections parlementaires,” I replied in my best school-book French.
“You are speaking French like you should!” he exclaimed in English. A few drinks probably helped me receive a friendly greeting.
But it’s also just the way things are in Barcelona. It is a vacuum filled by the world and there are wanderers talking in all tongues from every country:
Catalans and Aragons, the Spanish and the French, Asian tourists who are dressed to the nines and holding passports from the People’s Republic of China, African immigrants who are reminders of Spain’s colonial legacy, woman escapees from Daesh wearing hijabs, and Hasidic Jews wearing tallit and earlocks.
Everywhere, people are dragging their roller luggage behind them. Most of the foreigners on La Rambla are Asian men wearing skinny jeans and Ray-Bans, sucking on cigarettes as they smoke like chimneys.
A Pakistani family on holiday poses for an iPhone photo in a carrer. “Say ‘Money!’” says Dad.
Calling Barcelona “muy bienvenida” just states the obvious.
But you don’t have to look far to find Barcelona’s dark past. One place is near Montjuic Cemetery, not far from the old fort that served as a military prison.
Like so many other places associated with mass murder, there is nothing particularly sinister looking about the Fossar de la Pedrera. It’s an old quarry, but it could pass as a natural amphitheater, a place where musicians could play outdoor concerts or actors could perform the plays of the great Spanish dramatist Federico García Lorca, who loved Barcelona with all his heart.
The high walls are covered with cactus and palm trees that grow willy-nilly. The sky is a piercing blue on a cold December day as a small crowd of people move through the grounds.
Soon, it is obvious what the place is. There are memorials to the dead all around. There are also the sounds of people sobbing.
“I want to see if his name is here,” says one woman whose grandfather was killed by Francoist forces. She walks up the stairs through three rows of square concrete pillars, most of which have the engraved names of political prisoners executed by the regime.
“There he is,” she says, pointing to his name. “There he is.”
During the 1940s when Franco terrorized Barcelona the bodies of executed political prisoners were dumped here in mass graves.
The caudillo’s military henchmen told the families of the dead not to seek out the bodies of their loved ones, nor were they to leave any identifying marker. Nobody knows exactly how many people are buried there — estimates range from 1,700 to as many as 4,000.
The cruel death of political opponents (usually by firing squad after torture) was not enough to satisfy the fascist believers in franquismo. You had to erase them, and you had to silence their families because the enemy was not just people but an idea — the idea of liberal democracy.
Liberal democracy and parliamentary government had “infected” the state, said the Francoists. That meant the Republic had to be wiped out and the military was the “disinfectant” — only Franco and the purity promised by order, authority, and conservative Catholicism were to remain.
Erase the people, erase the idea, and replace it with something “wholesome”: From 1939 to his death in 1975, the Franco dictatorship waged a ruthless culture war that reduced Spain to a backward, oppressed nation struggling with poverty and totalitarianism.
All is now supposed to be forgiven and forgotten. Part of The Transition, the process of replacing dictatorship with the liberal democracy Franco spent nearly 37 years trying to destroy, was the Pacto del Olvido — the Pact of Forgetting.
“In Spain there is only one way to reach democracy, which is to forget the past,” the Communist leader Santiago Carrillo said in 1975. Forget and move on — that was the formula.
Both the Left and the Right would bury the hatchet to avoid dealing with the legacy of Francoism.
There’s only one problem: People can’t forget, particularly here in Barcelona, when Franco’s legacy still casts a long shadow over politics and life. One reason why is the majority PP, the governing party in Spain, the party of Prime Minister Rajoy, the conservative party founded by Franco’s former interior minister, continues to embrace the Francoist past in ways that aren’t even subtle.
As late as 2013, aging veterans of the Francoist Blue Division residing in Catalonia received official honors from the Spanish government for their service — a move applauded by the PP. Sent by the caudillo to fight the Soviets alongside the Nazis during World War II, many of those same men also participated in the fight against democratic government in Barcelona during the Civil War.
That would be something like the German government under Angela Merkel officially honoring surviving members of the Waffen SS who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad as well as assisted Einsatzgruppen as they rounded up Soviet Jews.
Last year’s October 1 independence referendum and the response it garnered from Madrid made many wonder out loud if Rajoy was openly embracing Francoist tactics.
Before voting took place, Madrid ordered the Guardia Civil to raid the government buildings in Barcelona on October 20 to seize voting materials and arrest leaders of the independence movement. Among those arrested were government officials Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Cuixart — “the two Jordis” who later adorned posters and are remembered with the color yellow.
So, when the National Police Corps and the Guardia Civil under orders from Madrid thrashed Barcelona voters with billy-clubs during the October 1 independence referendum, many barcelonins said the central government had turned the clock back to 1939.
During two days of attacks by the national police more than 1,000 people were sent to Barcelona hospitals. For the record, it should be noted Rajoy publicly thanked the police forces who attacked voters, praising them for “upholding the law.”
“In America, you at least have a national narrative when it comes to discussing your Civil War,” says Sebastian, a Catalan photographer who accompanied the group to the Fossar de la Pedrera. “There are people who want to hold on to the past there just like here — look at all the arguments about whether you should take down your Civil War statues. Look at all those people who say you can’t erase history, or who argue that the guys who fought for the Confederacy weren’t that bad.”
As Sebastian walks back to the car, he speaks even more earnestly. “We don’t have that,” he said, emphasizing every word. “We don’t have that. It will take one or two more generations dying off before people will be able to talk honestly about Franco and what he left behind. That’s what it will take to develop a national narrative about Franco.”
As I walk later down the Carrer de Sant Pau, I pass the school where the day before I saw all the yellow ribbons and all the yellow footprints.
They are gone, gone like they had never been there, wiped clean so not a speck of yellow paint or a scrap of yellow plastic remain.
I don’t know who removed them and no one I asked could tell me. Maybe it was government officials or members of a pro-unity political party, but that’s just my guess.
But the appearance and disappearance of something as simple as a color sums up everything Catalonia faces.
Like so many other places in the world, scars have the strange power to remind Catalans that their past is all too real, that history colors the present, that there can really be no forgetting.
Go to the Fossar de la Pedrera and you will learn how deep those scars are on the Catalonian soul.
Yet, forgetting is not the answer. Life might only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward. Catalans — at least a narrow majority of them — want to move forward to independence even if the rest of Spain says no, even if the rest of Spain also lives by William Faulkner’s dictum, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Franco and freedom have collided before. Freedom won — that’s part of the past, too.
It might be the future as well.
Paul R. Huard is an award-winning journalist who covers military history and national security issues for daily newspapers and online publications. His work appears in the National Interest, the (Portland, Oregon, USA) Oregonian, RealClearDefense, RealClearHistory, RealClearPolitics, War Is Boring, War On The Rocks — Molotov Cocktail, We Are The Mighty, and Arc Digital. Follow him on Twitter at @paul_huard and at his Web site The Pen and The Sword (www.paulrhuard.com).
Support for this report was provided by a generous grant from Ruth and Walter Coppock/Coppock Family Charitable Funding.
