The Uprising Begins

There was a good deal of shooting on both sides, and. blood began to flow in several parts of the city.

Continuing Spanish Civil War Prelude,
with a selection from Barcelona Outbreak by William Archer. This selection is presented in 5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Spanish Civil War Prelude.

Time: 1909
Place: Barcelona

I shall now give a rapid sketch of the course of events, leaving Ferrer, for the moment, entirely out of it.

In the early hours of Monday, the 26th, some workshops and factories resumed work as usual; but as soon as the news spread that the strike was actually taking effect, work was everywhere abandoned. In some cases the employers themselves ordered their workmen out, fearing to have their windows broken. Bands of women went from shop to shop and from office to office, demanding that they should close; and they seem to have met with no refusals. But — unfortunately, as it proved — there was one large body of workers which refused to stand in with the rest. Throughout the morning the electric cars ran as usual, and the servants of the company declined to quit their posts. Had they done so quietly, the day might have passed in peace, and work might have been resumed on the morrow. It was in stopping the tramway service that the first acts of violence took place. Cars were overturned and burned; rails were torn up; and the police and gendarmes, in trying to protect the car service, came into frequent conflict with the crowd. There was a good deal of shooting on both sides, and. blood began to flow in several parts of the city. By three in the afternoon the street-car service had entirely ceased. Cabs, too, had been driven from the streets, and two at least of the railways connecting Barcelona with the outside world were put out of action. It was not till next day that the isolation of the city, whether by rail or wire, was rendered practically complete.

How, in the meantime, were the authorities employing themselves? They were undoubtedly in rather a tight place. The military garrison had been depleted by the war, but there remained eight hundred regular troops in Barcelona. Of policemen there were eight or nine hundred and of gendarmes (Guardias Civiles, a fine body of men) about one thousand. These forces were certainly none too many to hold in check a rebellious populace of half a million, in a city covering some forty square miles of ground. A considerable number had to be immobilized for the protection of arsenals, military stores, etc.; and the soldiers, as a whole, were not greatly to be relied upon, as the people insisted on cheering them wherever they appeared, and treating them as the victims of governmental oppression. Under the circumstances, the best policy would probably have been one of conciliation. The disturbance might have been treated as a more or less legitimate movement of protest, all measures being directed toward securing the peaceful resumption of work next morning. If this policy ever occurred to any one, it was negatived by a telegram from the Minister of the Interior, Sefior La Cierva, urging that the strike must not be treated like an ordinary economic manifestation, but repressed with vigor, as a rebellion.

Between one and three on Tuesday afternoon barricades sprang up in many streets and active fighting began on a quite different scale from that of the previous day — arms having been obtained by the looting of gun-stores, pawnshops, and at least one armory. Almost at the same time, first one great column of smoke, and then another, went up into the blue air. It was the splendid building of the Padres Esculapios, and the convent and church of the Jeronimas, that were burning. From that time onward, for about sixty hours, anarchy reigned in Barcelona. The street-fighting was incessant, save for a sort of truce in the early mornings; and almost every hour saw a fresh ecclesiastical building of one sort or another given to the flames. On the night of the 27th, from the sur rounding hills, the spectacle of Barcelona dotted all over with conflagrations must have been at once superb and terrible. But there was no strategy in the fighting, no method in the convent-burning. It was all desultory, planless, purposeless; an uncontrollable ebullition of rage and mischief. The authorities were still in telegraphic communication with Madrid by way of the Balearic Islands; and one line of railway had either not been cut or had been restored. Troops reached the city from distant parts of Spain, who were more to be trusted than the local levies. Artillery was brought into play against the barricades. By Thursday evening the revolt had pretty well exhausted itself. Business began to be resumed on Friday, though conflicts still occurred in the streets in certain quarters. By Monday the city had resumed its normal aspect, and the “tragic week” was over. More than fifty ecclesiastical buildings — churches, convents, colleges, etc., — lay in ruins. The total death-roll, however, was comparatively small. It is generally placed between sixty and seventy; but the Minister of the Interior, in the Cortes, stated it at one hundred and four. Apparently marksmanship was not the strong point of the combatants on either side; and the rioters were very scantily armed. The losses among the soldiers and police seem to have been absolutely insignificant — not more than four or five all told. The wounded on both sides were, of course, very much more numerous.

Many people have written and spoken as though some sinister mystery underlay the fact that the protest against the Melilla adventure took such a violently anticlerical turn. There is really no mystery in the matter. For reasons above indicated, the religious houses were chronically and intensely unpopular. The clergy were supposed (and rightly) to be hand in glove with the militarists. A most unwise attempt had also been made in some quarters to represent the war in the light of a crusade of the Christian against the infidel — a piece of hypocrisy that deceived no one and irritated many. At a meeting of four thousand workmen held at Tarrasa, a manufacturing town in the immediate neighborhood of Barcelona, a few days before the outbreak, a resolution was passed protesting against “the sending to war of citizens productively employed and, as a rule, indifferent to the triumph of ‘the Cross’ over ‘the Crescent,’ when it would be easy to form regiments of priests and monks who, besides being directly interested in the success of the Catholic religion, have no family or home, and are of no utility to the country.”

William Archer begins here. Perceval Gibbon begins here.

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