The Week of the Child

With the exception of the Basque Country, religious services were prohibited in Republican Spain. On 12 December 1936, the government of Catalonia issued a decree abolishing the traditional day for Christmas gift giving, the Day of the Wise Men, January 6, and the Cavalcade of the Three Wise Men [Cabalgata de los Reyes] that traditionally took place the day before and replacing them with a secular Week of the Child sponsored by the Department of Industry at the beginning of January.   

Gift giving and toys were at its heart. This newsreel made by Laya Films, part of the government’s Commissariat of Culture, shows a scene from the 1938 celebration in Barcelona. Children gather in the playground of the La Farigola elementary school and a toy-laden truck, with an inscription reading “Week of the Child. A toy for every child!”, arrives.  

The week was used to promote social solidarity. The Department of Education ordered all teachers to explain to their students “the duty of human solidarity… to attend to the needs of refugees” and get their “moral and material co-operation”. Citizens were urged to donate what they could so that toys could be purchased to be given to the children of refugees and those in the care of social assistance, and a poster issued by the Department of Health and Social Assistance called on Catalans to “relieve the absence of the father with your donations”.  

Local committees were established to collect contributions, purchase toys, and organize other events. These varied from place to place. They were most elaborate in Barcelona, where events were held in locales across the city. There were football matches, plays, concerts, performances by clowns, ventriloquists and magicians, excursions, and a screening of Tarzan of the Apes. Many were organized by the workers of collectivized industries, including General Motors.  In Girona, President Manuel Azaña and his wife helped give out the presents.  

The Week of the Child was also celebrated in Madrid, Valencia and other places outside Catalonia. In some places, the traditional cavalcade was replaced by a parade without religious references. The one in January 1937 in Valencia, which was then the capital of the Republic, combined the traditional format of floats, bands, and costumes, with a very different kind of content. There were Republican symbols and representations of leaders like prime minister Largo Caballero; floats honouring the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin; a float ridiculing General Queipo de Llano and satirical representations of the rebels’ supporters: the Church, bankers, Falangists, and the Germans; and characters from US popular culture such as Betty Boop and Mickey and Minnie Mouse.