* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia

This is the story of an ephemeral monument inaugurated in the center of the current Plaza Catalunya in Barcelona by the president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, on March 14, 1937.

At the beginning of 1937, at a time when the conflict generated by the coup d’état of General Francisco Franco gave rise to the civil war, in Catalonia, a group of militiamen had formed with leaders and officers what was then known as the Battalion of the Death.

The president of the Generalitat, Lluís Companys, along with his advisors and some intellectuals, thought about how interesting it would be for the battalion and the people to pay tribute to them, which would give a morale boost not only to the group of militiamen but to the citizenship.

The Generalitat met with a series of artists and intellectuals and decided to study a project to build the figure of a militia soldier that they would place until the end of the conflict in the center of Plaza Catalunya, in gratitude to the soldiers who were fighting on the front. . It would serve as encouragement and hope to achieve final victory.

Not in vain the relations of the two main unions CNT-UGT were not having the best moment with the attempt to separately monopolize the limelight.

Those responsible for the project contacted the sculptor Miquel Paredes i Fonollà, author of the figure of The Smallest of All, a doll that was designed by the cartoonist Lola Anglada.

Paredes spoke with other artists, among whom were Adolf Armengol, Marcel·lí Porta, Josep Alumà and the set designer Joaquim Bartolím, who designed the figure of a standing militiaman, in a resting position, holding a rifle with a bayonet between his hands. hands.

The figure was built in plaster and burlap with a height of 12 meters. The inauguration had been announced for the morning of Sunday the 14th so that as many people as possible could attend.

As was logical, the event was attended by the president of the Generalitat Lluís Companys and the first Barcelona authorities who participated from the tribune installed on the sidewalk on the Besòs side in front of the Hotel Victoria building (extension of the original Vicente Ferrer building).

First, a parade was held in which a band of trumpets and drums and a group of health workers participated. Immediately after, the statue was inaugurated by Lluís Companys, who would later make a speech describing the militiamen’s fight and the need for everyone to be united to defeat the enemy. At noon the event ended.

While Companys harangued the population to remain united, a few meters to his right at the Hotel Colón, which had been requisitioned from its owners and occupied by the PSUC and the CNT, photographs of the Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin were displayed on its balconies.

With the end of the war, the square went in a short space of time from the demolition of the figure of the first soldier to the change of name by the dictatorship, which baptized it as “Spanish Army Square.”

Two months had passed since January 26 and La Vanguardia, which since January 28 had become La Vanguardia Española, on page 6 of the edition of Wednesday, March 29, 1939, published an article that, among other things, things, he said:

The demonstration, in magnificent order, continued along the Paseo del General Mola to the Spanish Army Plaza. In the latter, the protesters were joined by workers from the “La Hispano Switzerland” factory, approximately a thousand in number. The demonstration headed down Las Ramblas and then towards Fernando Street, until reaching the Plaza de San Jaime.

Later on May 1, an obelisk was inaugurated in the center of the square as a tribute to the fallen. The pressure of time in its construction meant that those responsible for the project did not agree with the obelisk, so, a year later, it was changed for another of much higher quality, but with the same ideology.

Despite the significance that the name change meant for some, General Yagüe himself, who had entered Barcelona as a victor, did not consider it appropriate to have changed the name of Plaza Catalunya to dedicate it to the Spanish Army.