Word: barcelona
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Hegira. Even if men and materials were to be had, the problem of distributing them was next to insoluble. For every road in the area was choked with refugees, not only a half million that had left Barcelona, but thousands more that the advancing Rebels swept before them. It was one of history's greatest and most tragic hegiras. From heights on the French frontier as far as eye could see a steady river of humanity slowly rolled toward the border...
...world's first reaction to Barcelona's fall was perplexity. Why did a city of 2,000,000 people, the reddest town on earth outside Russia, surrender to the Fascists as soon as they reached the suburbs? The explanation was that a metropolis divided against itself-and hungry-also falls...
...morning of Barcelona's capture, Radio Barcelona warned the approaching Rebels that the "city will be defended inch by inch, house by house, street by street." This bold talk reminded the world that Barcelona had smashed the local Fascist uprising in July 1936 with speed and vigor not duplicated anywhere else in Spain. The revolutionary Anarchists, Communists and Socialists-who had learned their discipline and their politics in the only large industrial centre in the country-proceeded to clear Catalonia of Franco forces and chase them half way across Aragon...
...Catalan front in Aragon became scandalously inactive. So conspicuous was Barcelona's failure to wage effective warfare against the Fascists, either industrially or militarily, that a favorite, bitter Loyalist quip was that Catalonia, alone of 27 European nations, had lived faithfully up to the non-intervention agreement not to help either side in the Spanish War. In May 1937, Anarchists tried to seize Barcelona and the Central Government, then at Valencia, had to send troops to Catalonia to restore order...
...politically-torn population soon faced the terrifying ordeal of hunger and air raids. By last autumn many an ardent antiFascist, his belly gnawed by hunger and his nerves frayed by bombs, began to wonder if, after all, the oppression of Fascism could be any worse. When, three days before Barcelona fell, the Loyalist Government called out all men to help build fortifications to withstand a siege, the city was war weary and apathetic. The job was quietly sabotaged. Many evaded the draft, many worked only halfheartedly. In the last few days before the fall, many Rebel sympathizers-the "Fifth Column...