The Barcelona of the first half of the 1930s was a political and social anthill that the big chancelleries looked at. The reason for interest was the clash of forces experienced in the city, in full republican effervescence, but also the strategic importance of the Catalan capital, which placed it squarely on the international stage and which caused European governments to take positions Starting with National Socialist Germany.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Barcelona of those years was a nest of Nazis. The historian Manu Valentín published La ciudad y la esvástica (Comanegra), in which he described the refuge that the former National Socialists found in the Catalan capital after the defeat in the Second World War. But one of the most interesting aspects of the book refers to an earlier stage, until 1936, when Nazism deployed a strategy aimed at controlling the large contingent of Germans who had settled there. “Barcelona – he points out – was a mirror of everything that was happening in the world”.
At the beginning of the thirties, “the German colony – explains the historian – was the most important of all the groups of foreigners in the city, with between 8,000 and 10,000 people”. Many of them had arrived in Catalonia with important Germanic industrial interests. Businessmen, technicians and highly qualified personnel had settled since the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th in a city where they soon created their network of cultural and economic organizations.
In Barcelona, ??National Socialist sympathizers or party members came to control cultural associations, businesses, bookstores and even leisure venues frequented or run by Germans. In his book, Valentín recounts how the tension, the persecution against political dissent and the boycott against Jewish interests that was taking place in German territory was transferred to Barcelona.
An example of this meeting of opposing positions can be seen in the city street guide. Valentín has reconstructed a list of the German citizens who lived, during the first half of the 1930s, on Avenida de la República Argentina, a sample that, despite being partial, serves to demonstrate that recalcitrant Nazis lived on the same street, anti-fascist militants and Jews of German origin. A small Germany that its government followed closely.
But the German interest also obeyed the need to use its network of contacts for economic or strategic purposes. The historian explains that the relationship between the part of the German colony with more economic power and more pro-Nazi relations with the Barcelona elites was fluid. “Many Nazis – he points out – shared a social bond with the fascists and with the local upper classes; they were suppliers to the army and had many links with the Africanists. In addition, they shared social life and many of the same leisure activities with Barcelona’s high society”.
The Germanic objective was the same that, in one way or another, all the great European powers had in those years, as fellow historian Arnau González explains. From his point of view, the Catalan capital concentrated the gazes of the chancelleries because “it was part of the European cities that could be important in a large-scale war, such as the one to come”. “As far as Spain is concerned – he adds – Barcelona was priority number 1, because the European governments believed that if something happened in the country, it would be in this city where it happened, whether it was, for example, a left-wing revolution like the independence of Catalonia”.
“In Barcelona there was industry, a port, chambers of commerce… Everyone saw that something would happen in the city, it was the capital that could cause a fire in Spain. Therefore, it was logical that it was a focus for diplomatic activity”. For this reason, he continues, when a government appointed a consul in Barcelona, ??it did not assign a low-ranking diplomat, but the name was carefully analyzed because it had an important political charge and would very possibly end up reporting directly to its respective capital in instead of doing it at the embassy in Madrid. “There was going to be politics in Barcelona.”
González has studied the role of the city in the European diplomatic context in those years in Catalonia during the European crisis (1931-1939): Spanish Ireland, French pawn or Mediterranean USSR? (Pagès) and the role of Italian diplomacy in Catalonia under surveillance. The Italian Consulate and the Fascio of Barcelona, ??1930-1943 (University of Valencia). Regarding Mussolini’s regime, he explains that Barcelona was important because there was a need to control opposition citizens who had taken refuge in the city.
But, on the other hand, there was a geostrategic priority. The expansion of the area of ??influence in the Mediterranean was on the agenda of fascism. Barcelona, ??the great industrial pole, was of capital importance. But it was not only an economic question, but also a military one, because, in the event of a war against France, Catalonia could become a fundamental bridgehead to threaten it from the south and, at the same time, put issue British naval supremacy in the area. That is why Italian diplomacy followed very closely what was happening in the city and deployed a strategy of espionage and propaganda.
When the Civil War broke out, the nature of the surveillance that European countries subjected Barcelona to changed substantially. The fear of the revolutionary spiral made countries such as the United Kingdom, France and Italy consider a direct armed intervention in the city to protect their respective colonies. As for the latter country and Germany, the connivance of the diplomatic missions in the military rebellion is far from proven, according to the two historians. When at the end of 1936 the two countries recognized Franco’s government, they abandoned any official representation in the city. González indicates that those responsible for these legations defended to their governments that they needed to be maintained because they believed that whatever the future of Catalonia, their countries had to be present, but neither Rome nor Berlin attend to these arguments.
