The Barcelona of the first half of the 1930s was a political and social hotbed to which the great foreign ministries turned their eyes. The reason for interest was the clash of forces that was taking place 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 led European governments to take positions in her. Starting with National Socialist Germany.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the Barcelona of those years was a nest of Nazis. The historian Manu Valentín published a few months ago The city and the swastika (Comanegra), where he described the refuge that the former National Socialists found in the Catalan capital after the defeat in World War II. But one of the most interesting aspects of the book refers to a previous stage, until 1936, when Nazism deployed a strategy aimed at controlling the important contingent of Germans living there. “Barcelona,” he points out, “was a mirror of everything that happened in the world.”
At the beginning of the 1930s, “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 at the hands of important German industrial interests. Entrepreneurs, 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 own network of cultural and economic organizations.
After Hitler’s rise to power, in January 1933, a process of Nazification of all the institutions that participated in German public life began, which also spread abroad. In Barcelona, ??National Socialist sympathizers or members of the party came to control cultural and business associations, bookstores and even entertainment venues frequented or run by Germans. In his book, Valentín recounts how the tension moved to Barcelona, ??the persecution against political dissent and the boycott against Jewish interests that was taking place on German soil.
An example of this meeting of opposite positions can be observed from the street map of the city. Valentín has reconstructed a list of German citizens who lived in the first half of the 1930s on Avenida de la República Argentina, a sample that, despite being very partial, is enough to show that recalcitrant Nazis lived on the same street. , anti-fascist militants and Jews of German origin. A true Germany in small that his government followed closely.
But the German interest was also due to 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 the greatest economic power and the most pro-Nazi with the Barcelona elites was fluid. “Many of the 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 ties to the Africanists. They also shared the same social life and many of the same leisure activities with Barcelona’s high society”.
The German objective was the same that, to a greater or lesser extent, all the great European powers had in those years, according to the also historian Arnau González. From his point of view, the Catalan capital was the focus of the foreign ministries because “it was part of the European cities that could be important in a major war, like the one that was to come.” “Regarding Spain –he adds- Barcelona was the number 1 priority, because the European governments believed that if something happened in the country it would be in that city where it happened, whether it was, for example, a leftist revolution or the independence of Catalonia. ”. It should not be forgotten that Miguel Primo de Rivera’s coup in 1923 had taken place precisely in the Catalan capital.
“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 appoint a low-ranking diplomat, but the name was carefully analyzed because it had an important political charge and very possibly they would end up reporting directly to their respective capital instead of do it to the embassy in Madrid. “Barcelona – he assures – was going to become political”.
González has studied the role of the city in the European diplomatic context in those years in Catalonia in 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 (Universitat de València). Regarding the Mussolini regime, he explains that Barcelona was important because, on the one hand, there was a need to control its opposition citizens who had taken refuge in the city.
But, on the other hand, there was a geostrategic priority. On the agenda of fascism was the expansion of its area of ??influence in the Mediterranean, either through territorial conquests or through political alliances. Barcelona, ??the great industrial hub, 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, question British naval supremacy in the zone. For this reason, Italian diplomacy closely followed what was happening in the city and deployed a strategy of both espionage and propaganda.
When the Civil War broke out, the nature of the surveillance that European countries subjected Barcelona to changed substantially. Fear of the revolutionary spiral led countries like the United Kingdom, France and Italy to consider a direct armed intervention in the city to protect their respective colonies. Regarding the latter country and Germany, the collusion of their diplomatic legations in the military rebellion in July is far from being proven, according to both historians.
What is certain is that when both countries recognized Franco’s government at the end of that year, they abandoned all official representation in the city. Arnau González indicates that those responsible for these legations defended before their governments that they had to be maintained because they believed that whatever the future of Catalonia was, their countries had to be present in it, but neither Rome nor Berlin attended to those arguments, although what they did both maintained were their informant and espionage networks. His diplomatic representation in the Catalan capital would return in 1939 with the fall of the city.
