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Abstract
Lluís Companys was the President of the Generalitat de Catalunya during the Spanish Civil War. He had led an abortive federalist rebellion in October 1934 and later faced the contradictory problems of a war effort against General Franco's military rebels and the revolutionary, and often murderous, aspirations of anarchists and the anti-Stalinist Communists of the POUM. After the Civil War, he was exiled in France, seized by the Gestapo and executed by the Franco regime on 15 October 1940. The contemporary Anglo-Saxon views of Companys ranged from admiration by supporters of the Spanish Republic to the hostility of right-wingers. Knowledgeable experts on Catalonia like Professor Edgar Allison Peers or the writer John Langdon-Davies regarded Companys with sympathy. The most extreme example of the latter was the British consul, Norman King, who blamed Companys for the breakdown of political authority and for the atrocities perpetrated by the left. Sympathy or antipathy to Companys did not depend on realistic analysis of his performance and its context but rather was usually the consequence of their prior leftist or rightist views.
Notes
1 Enrique Moradiellos, Neutralidad benévola: el gobierno británico y la insurrección militar española de 1936 (Oviedo: Pentalfa, 1990), 104.
2 Grahame to Simon, 30 May 1932, W6393/12/41; 21 October 1932, W12066/12/41, in British Documents on Foreign Affairs. Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office. Part II, From the First to the Second World War. Series F, Europe, 1919–1939 [henceforth BDFA], ed. Christopher Seton-Watson, 67 vols (Bethesda: Univ. Publications of America, 1990–96), XXVI, 46–47, 59–61.
3 Grahame to Simon, 10 January 1933, Public Record Office, London, FO371/17426, W472/116/41.
4 Grahame to Simon, 12 December 1933, W14410/116/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 126–29.
5 Grahame to Simon, 28 December 1933, W322/31/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 133–34.
6 Grahame to Simon, 15 January 1934, W862/862/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 139.
7 Grahame to Simon, 5 June 1934, and enclosure, King to Grahame, 31 May 1934, W5648/31/41; Grahame to Simon, 13 June 1934, W5851/31/41; Grahame to Simon, 28 June 1934, and enclosure, King to Grahame, 19 June 1934, W5648/31/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 150–52, 154–56.
8 Edgar Allison Peers, Catalonia Infelix (London: Methuen, 1937), 222–23.
9 Frederic Escofet, Al servei de Catalunya i de la República, 2 vols (Paris: Edicions Catalanes, 1973) I, 193 (the complete text of Companys’ speech can be found on pp. 199–205).
10 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 227.
11 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 228.
12 King to Simon, 7 October 1934, W9023/27/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 166–67.
13 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 231.
14 See Gabriel Mario de Coca, Anti-Caballero. Crítica marxista de la bolchevización del Partido Socialista (1930–1936) (Madrid: Ediciones Engel, 1936), 107, makes the remarkable claim that Anguera's mother was a canonized saint. Cf. Juan-Simeón Vidarte, El bienio negro y la insurrección de Asturias (Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1978), 233.
15 Grahame to Simon, 10 October 1934, PRO FO371/18596, W9132/27/41.
16 Henry Buckley, Life and Death of the Spanish Republic (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1940), 145.
17 Alardo Prats, El Gobierno de la Generalidad en el banquillo (Madrid: Imprenta Salvador Quemades, 1935), 382–83.
18 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 234–35.
19 King to Chilton, 21 February 1936, enclosure, W1678/62/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 270–71.
20 Chilton to Eden, 2 May 1936, PRO FO371/20521, W3947/62/41; Enrique Moradiellos, ‘El gobierno británico y Cataluña durante la República y la guerra civil’, El Basilisco, 27 (2000), 21–36 (p. 24).
21 King to Chilton, 4 March 1936, enclosure, W2117/62/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVI, 279–80.
22 King to Ogilvie-Forbes, 5 June 1936, PRO FO425/413, W5256/6241.
23 King to Eden, 29 July 1936, W7485/62/41, BDFA Part II, Series F, XXVII, 5–7.
24 King to Eden, 2 August, PRO FO371/20527, W7809/62/41.
25 King to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; draft of letter from King to Casanovas, 16 August 1936, PRO FO371/20532, W9003/62/41.
26 Moradiellos, ‘El gobierno británico y Cataluña’, 28.
27 King to Eden, 15 August 1936, FO371/20569, W10003/62/41.
28 King to Eden, 28 August 1936, W10136/62/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVII, 24–25.
29 Franklin to Hull, 12, 17, 19 August, 1 September; Perkins to Hull, 22 September 1936, reprinted in A City in War: American Views on Barcelona and the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, ed. James W. Cortada (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1985), 17–18, 22–23, 26–27.
30 Perkins to Hull, 2 October 1936, in A City in War, ed. Cortada, 29–30.
31 Cedric Salter, Try-Out in Spain (New York: Harper Brothers, 1943), 87–89.
32 Salter, Try-Out in Spain, 66–68.
33 King to FO and minutes, 6 August 1936, FO371/20527, quoted by Maria Thomas, ‘Beneath “the Thin Veneer of Civilisation”: Norman King, British Consular Officials and the Spanish Civil War. The Front-line of Albion's Perfidy?’, MA thesis (London School of Economics, 2006), 31.
34 King to Seymour, 2 September, Seymour to King, 5 September, PRO FO371/20537, W10719/62/41; King to Western Department, 10 September, PRO FO371/20538, W11209/62/41; King to Roberts, 11 September 1936, PRO FO371/20539, W11527/62/41.
35 King to Western Department, 3 October 1936, and enclosure, Companys to King, 30 September PRO FO371/20542, W13083/62/41.
36 King to Roberts, 25 November 1936, PRO FO371/20551, W107016/62/41.
37 John Langdon-Davies, Behind the Spanish Barricades (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1936). All quotations are from pp. 174–79.
38 Geoffrey Brereton, Inside Spain (London: Quality Press, 1938), 14–15.
39 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 248–52, 264–66.
40 King to Eden, 30 September 1936, PRO FO425/413, W12877/62/41; Perkins to Hull, 29 September 1936, in A City in War, ed. Cortada, 28–29.
41 King to Howard, 21 December 1936, FO371/20567/19038/62/41.
42 Bowers to Secretary of State, 12 April 1937, Foreign Relations of the United States 1937, 5 vols (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1954), I, 279.
43 King to Eden, 10 May 1937, W9745/1/41, BDFA, Part II, Series F, XXVII, 111–15.
44 Peers, Catalonia Infelix, 283–87.
45 See the collection of US consular reports from Barcelona edited by Cortada, in A City in War, passim.
46 Perkins to Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, 20 April 1937, in Foreign Relations of the United States 1937, I, 286–87.
47 Lawrence Fernsworth, Spain's Struggle for Freedom (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957), 243.
48 Sir Robert Hodgson, Spain Resurgent (London: Hutchinson, 1953), 139.
* Disclosure Statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.