Everything is prepared, the calculations made. The coordinates of the target, the distance —1,800 meters—, the orientation of the shot, the “reduced” load, the wind speed. At an order from the Captain General of Catalonia and head of the IV Organic Division of the Army of the Republic, Domènec Batet, two batteries will be arranged in the lap of Montjuïc to bombard the Palau de la Generalitat and the Barcelona City Hall.
October 1934, the tension is extreme. The differences of the previous months between the government of Lluís Companys and the governments of the Republic, headed by the right-wing leaders of the Radical Republican Party, Alejandro Lerroux and Ricardo Samper, have grown to become insurmountable. In the middle, the divergence around the Law of Cultivation Contracts promoted by the Generalitat.
In the background, the rise of the extreme right throughout Europe and the possibility of the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights —José María Gil-Robles’ CEDA— entering the government of Spain. The progressive work of the governments of Manuel Azaña and the continuity of the republican regime itself are in danger. Several labor organizations and unions threaten. If that happens, they will call a general strike. In Madrid, Asturias and other parts of Spain, working sectors of the PSOE and the UGT are preparing an insurrection.
And, in the end, it happened. On October 4, Lerroux forms a government with three CEDA ministers. The Generalitat is scared. It brings together the Mossos d’Esquadra in Barcelona and distributes them in various buildings. The following day the Workers’ Alliance calls the general strike in Catalonia. Josep Dencàs and Miquel Badia have also been preparing the youth squads of Esquerra Republicana – Estat Català, along with other separatist organizations for days.
At four in the afternoon on October 6, General Batet –born in Tarragona in 1872— meets with President Companys at the Generalitat. He warns her: if, as expected, she makes any kind of proclamation that deviates from the constitutional order, the Republic will declare a state of war to restore normality. At five o’clock the Company’s government meets to decide how to act and what message to give. Some want him to be more leftist to lead the labor movement, others want a separatist proclamation, while others propose to withdraw.
Without waiting for events, at that same time, according to the documentation that La Vanguardia has accessed, in the Drassanes barracks the calculations are beginning to be made in case the city has to be bombed. This is demonstrated by the plans with the location of the artillery pieces, sketches, the documents of the report Tiro prepared on the plan to beat from the slopes of Montjuich the palaces of the Generalitat and the Town Hall and the drawings of the buildings and streets of Barcelona that Batet commissioned later to explain his performance during “the Fets d’Octubre”.
The military chiefs order that, “choosing positions on the eastern slope of Montjuich Castle and in the vicinity of the Funicular Station, at the point whose exact coordinates have already been calculated by their battery in the previous days of instruction, they will prepare the shot on target against the Generalitat. Leaving the barracks at my order” The troops have to go up to the chosen place on the Montjuïc road and the order —which will not be given— has to leave Drassanes. “Once in position, it will be linked by means of lights and Morse alphabet with the roof of the barracks.”
The material, which this newspaper has consulted exclusively, forms part of the donation that Julio Batet Rodríguez-Roda, the general’s grandson, has bequeathed this month to the Arxiu Montserrat Tarradellas i Macià, thus expanding the military’s collection from the donation made by the Carbó-Batet family in 1992. It consists of a dozen folders with family correspondence and with the historian monk Hilari Raguer, author of the reference biography of the soldier (1994), fifty photographs, decorations, the general’s sash and his saber.
Shortly after eight o’clock on the night of October 6, 1934, President Companys proclaimed “the Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic” and offered Barcelona as the capital of this republic. It was not, therefore, an independence proclamation but in a federal code. The Lerroux government declared a state of war and immediately afterwards clashes began between the forces loyal to the Generalitat and the troops of General Batet. The best preparation of the defense that the Republican military did was the key to decide the result of the night.
In the subsequent recreation of the Rambla de Santa Mònica, Batet made it clear how he had proceeded, from which point the “rebel fire” had broken out and from which house “the rebels attacked with hand bombs” Also that in the Center Autonomista de Dependents of the Comerç i de la Indústria (CADCI) “the offensive and resistance was maximum being necessary to take it by assault”. The same as the Sometents building and the socialist center, which “despite being bombed, was not handed over, and it was necessary to enter and occupy it.” rebel”, in reference to Dencàs, and one of the “beaten buildings”, with the drawing of the shots on the façade.
The general had a team of machine guns placed on the façade of the Drassanes barracks “for possible eventualities”. He noted that a police station in the lap of Montjuïc “occupied by rebel forces was forced to surrender, surrendering 220 men with weapons” and the port police station, “forced to surrender by taking its occupants prisoner and taking their weapons.” The fighting lasted all night.
As the plans and notes issued between military commanders show, after five o’clock in the morning on October 7, the army set up batteries on the Barcelona dock, next to the Jaume I tower, to bring down the radio broadcasting antenna. Radio Barcelona at Tibidabo. According to calculations, 7,490 meters away. The mission was clear: “destruction shot”. Around seven in the morning, Companys informed Batet that the Generalitat was surrendering. The revolt was over.
With the donation to the Arxiu Tarradellas, historians will be able to learn more about the figure of Batet and the disposition of the troops and artillery that allowed him to control the insurrection during the Fets d’Octubre. A key fact from which the then commander of the Mossos, Frederic Escofet, learned and which helped him to defend the Generalitat on July 19, 1936 when the rebels were the military.
Then Batet was no longer in Barcelona, ??but in Burgos, as head of the VI Military Division. As, once again, he remained faithful to the Republic, he was arrested and a court martial sentenced him to death on January 8, 1937. Handwritten notes of his last moments have also been found in the Poblet archive. On February 18, General Francisco Franco had him shot. Not only did he not forgive him for not having joined the rebel military, but on the night of October 6, when he was an adviser to the Ministry of the Navy, he did not heed his recommendations to razing the main buildings in Barcelona. The military man from Tarragona had prepared it diligently, but acting with moderation in 1934 was very expensive for him.
