July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona

Barcelona's 19 July military rising
Part of the Spanish coup of 1936
Soldiers and Assault Guards entrenched in a building
Date 19–21 July 1936 Location Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain Result Republican victory Beginning of Revolutionary Catalonia Spanish Revolution of 1936
Belligerents
Spanish Republic Generalitat of Catalonia CNT/FAI	Nationalist Spain
Commanders and leaders
Buenaventura Durruti Francisco Ascaso † General Francisco Llano de la Encomienda Colonel Antonio Escobar Huertas President Lluís Companys Captain Frederic Escofet	General Manuel Goded  General Álvaro Fernández Burriel
Strength
5,000 men (Civil Guard, Police, Assault Guard, Mossos d'Esquadra) CNT Militia	5,000 men
Casualties and losses
200	300

The July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona was a mutiny that occurred in Barcelona, the capital and largest city of Catalonia, in the Second Spanish Republic from 19 to 21 July 1936. It was one of the main events that marked the start of the Spanish Civil War.

A group of officers of the Spanish Republican Army in Barcelona launched an uprising in support of the coup of July 1936. They were opposed by the Civil Guard, the Assault Guard, and the Mossos d'Esquadra which remained loyal to the Republican government, and the militias of the powerful anarchist trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) that controlled much of Catalonia. Rebel troops led by Manuel Goded captured some strategic locations in the city but were defeated by Republican and CNT forces after one day of combat. Many leaders of the uprising including Goded were imprisoned and executed at Montjuïc Castle.

The defeat of the uprising in Barcelona was a great success for the Republic, but it became clear that the CNT and the anarcho-syndicalist militias in particular were the ones that really controlled the city. The mutiny marked the beginning of the Revolutionary Catalonia period and the Spanish Revolution of 1936, which resulted in the harsh repression against those suspected of being "fascist" or opposed to the revolution.

Background

Main article: Spanish coup of July 1936

On 17 July 1936, a part of the Spanish Republican Army led by a group of officers – among them the generals José Sanjurjo, Francisco Franco, Emilio Mola, Manuel Goded Llopis and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano – tried to overthrow the left-wing Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic. One of the main goals of the coup was to take control of the major cities of the country, among them Barcelona, the capital and largest city of Catalonia. The local plotters, led by the General Fernández Burriel, planned to use the troops of the garrisons in the periphery of Barcelona, about 5,000 men of the IV Division, in order to march towards the city center and join up in the Plaça de Catalunya. Then, they would occupy the city and await the arrival of Goded from the Balearic Islands. General Francisco Llano de la Encomienda, the commander of the IV division, stayed loyal to the government, but most of his officers supported the coup. The Barcelona Civil Guard led by General José Aranguren, the Assault Guards, and the Mossos d'Esquadra led by Captain Frederic Escofet, also remained loyal to the government. Additionally, the El Prat air base of the Spanish Republican Air Force, commanded by Colonel Felipe Díaz Sandino, remained loyal to the government and its planes bombed the rebel troops.

On 18 July, news about a rising in the Army of Africa in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco reached Barcelona but Lluís Companys, the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, refused to give weapons to the workers and ordered anarchists carrying weapons to be detained. The CNT, a powerful anarchist trade union led by Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso, assaulted some army depots and the prison ship Uruguay, and started to make home-made grenades and improvised armoured cars. Furthermore, the Assault Guards handed out rifles to the CNT.

The fight in Barcelona

Republican soldiers and Assault Guards during the July 1936 uprising in Barcelona, in the Telefónica Building

On 19 July, during the early hours of the day, a few hundred civilian volunteers, chiefly Carlist requetés led by José Cunill, reported to various military quarters, mostly the San Andreu barracks. Before dawn at 4 a.m., the officers in the Pedralbes Barrack told their soldiers that the government had ordered them to crush an anarchist rising in Barcelona. The troops left the barracks and marched towards the Plaça de Catalunya through the Avinguda Diagonal. Soon after, Companys received the news of the troops advancing towards the city. An hour later, the Montesa Cavalry regiment, the Santiago Dragoons Regiment, and a battery of the 7th Light Regiment left their barracks and marched towards the Plaça de Catalunya, but the deployment of troops was badly co-ordinated and the junction of the rebels columns was never achieved. The rebel troops were attacked by snipers and with home-made bombs. The anarchists built barricades with paving stones in order to block the city center, and the Civil Guard and the Assault Guards joined them against the rebel troops. Some units were forced to retreat into their barracks and others never broke into the streets, but an infantry column, led by Major Lopez Amor, reached the Plaça de Catalunya and occupied the telephone exchange, and other units occupied the Hotel Colón and the Ritz and barricaded themselves. At 11 a.m., General Goded arrived from Mallorca and arrested Llano de la Encomienda, but the situation of the rebel troops was hopeless.

Combat occurred at the Plaça de Catalunya and other parts of Barcelona, but the anarchists and the loyal troops surrounded all the rebel-held buildings in the city. The Civil Guards, led by the Colonel Antonio Escobar, assaulted the Hotel Colón and the Ritz, and the anarchists occupied the telephone exchange. After that, Goded surrendered and broadcast a statement over the radio to prevent further bloodshed. By nightfall, the rebel troops only held the Drassanes barracks near the port and the Andreu barracks. The next morning, the anarchists led by Durruti assaulted the barracks and the rebel troops surrendered. Ascaso died during the assault, but the CNT seized 30,000 rifles in the barracks. There were over 500 deaths and 3,000 wounded.

Aftermath

The officers and main leaders of the rebellion who had been arrested were initially taken to Montjuïc Castle, where they remained until 26 July, when they were transferred to the prison ship Uruguay in the city's port. During the time they were imprisoned on the prison ship, the prisoners were treated well: they were allowed to sit on the deck and read novels from the ship's library. However, the provocative attitude of many of the detainees were grounds for the authorities to end these privileges. The officers involved in the conspiracy were tried in court martial by the republican authorities, aboard the Uruguay . The general Manuel Cardenal presided over the military tribunal that judged the rebellious officers. On August 11, Generals Goded and Fernández Burriel were tried for having directed the military rebellion, condemned to death, and shot in the moat of Montjuic Castle the next day . General Justo Legorburu Domínguez-Matamoros would also end up being executed. A few days later, on August 26, after being tried in court martial, other ringleaders of the rebellion were also shot: the infantry commander José López-Amor Jiménez, and the captains Enrique López Belda, Luis López Varela, and Fernando Lizcano de la Rosa.

Political implications in Catalonia

Main article: Revolutionary Catalonia

The quick defeat of the uprising in Barcelona was a great success for the Popular Front government but, ironically, the main beneficiaries were the anarchist militias that already had significant power in the city. After the defeat of the coup, the CNT was the real power with 30,000 armed men and women, while the government had only 5000. Barcelona was practically in the hands of the anarchist workers' militias, which had obtained the armament of the military arsenals and had a force of armed men far superior to the security forces with which both the Central Government and the Generalitat could rely on. Hugh Thomas believes that at the end of the military rebellion in Barcelona the security forces had 5,000 armed men, while the CNT-FAI had about 30,000 armed men. Thus, although the loyal forces had managed to defeat the rebels, the reality was that the anarchists had taken control of the city and had supplanted the authority and powers of Catalan government and the Spanish state.

On the night of 20 July, the anarchist leaders Durruti, Juan García Oliver, and Diego Abad de Santillán visited Companys on the occasion of the new situation that had been created. Companys could have used the security forces to force the workers to return the rifles and ammunition they had confiscated, but he was in dangerous and preferred to offer the anarchists the possibility of taking power or collaborating with the state. The anarchist leaders, despite the historical experience of the liberal movement, opted for the second option, although the state would have a fairly limited role as would be demonstrated in the following months. From this meeting between Companys and the main anarchist leaders would come the creation of the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia (CCMA), which would be the real government in Barcelona for many months. This marked the beginning of what has become known as the Spanish Revolution. The political situation would not be consolidated as it appeared, and a large number of conflicts and confrontations would take place in the city during the following months. This led to an escalation between Republican and anarchist factions known as the May Days, which led to the restoration of government control in May 1937. The Republican counterintelligence agencies were able to significantly reduce the activities of the fifth column affects the Nationalist rebel faction, as well as discover and arrest almost all the leaders of Falange that had survived the failed uprising.

See also

• List of Spanish Republican military equipment of the Spanish Civil War
• List of Spanish Nationalist military equipment of the Spanish Civil War

Bibliography

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