Plaza Catalunya has always enjoyed an indisputable centrality; the proof is that under all political regimes it has been chosen to stage transcendental acts or not of very different signs.
A few weeks after the city passed into the hands of the Francoist occupation army in 1939, they did not hesitate to stage the commemoration of May 2, 1808 there, despite the fact that that distant anti-Napoleonic popular uprising in Madrid was not a round anniversary either.
The Youth Organization of the Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the JONS was responsible for the event. He was looking to obtain revenue from such patriotic acts; and it is that they tried to extol that historical revolt with the recent uprising of July 36.
A large obelisk was erected in the center of the lower part. At its side the altar was installed for the celebration of a campaign mass, surrounded by flags, banners and scripts. A guard was set up throughout the early morning and early morning hours made up of a selection of students from Escuelas PÃas. They were all in military uniform, in addition to the rifle and helmet. The announced act had to be canceled due to bad weather. What remained of all this was the photograph worthy of the cover of La Vanguardia, captured by the accredited professional Antoni Campañà , who chose the epic of a low-angle shot of the head of an adolescent Antoni Tà pies as the protagonist of the image. The information was captured by a detailed world chronicle of the Labor Party and by Hitler’s great speech in Berlin, preceded by Goebbels’s. Fortunately, the obelisk was dismantled.
The following year this same commemoration was repeated, which was accompanied by good weather. The obelisk was replanted; at half height, the Falangist arrows and below a large cross; At the bottom was the inscription: “Fallen by God and by Spain. Present! May 2, 1808 – May 2, 1940â€.
At the end, the male and female sections of the Youth Organization, Flechas Navales, Flechas del Aire, sections of second-line Militia and a flag of the Spanish University Union paraded. Fortunately, such a masquerade was not repeated.
That same day the Book Festival was also celebrated: Another atmosphere.
