Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona

In the days following the defeat of the military uprising in Barcelona, Mateo Santos was travelling through the streets on the top of a truck documenting the revolution that was wracking the city. The first film made of the Spanish conflict, the 22-minute-long Reportaje del movimiento revolucionario en Barcelona (Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona) gives the viewer the impression of being in the middle of the events as they unfolded. It shows the destruction left by the street fighting, barricades, a crowd observing the mummified bodies of nuns that had been put on public display outside a convent, militiamen piling works of religious art in the street to be burned later, and concludes with scenes of the Durruti column leaving for the Aragón front. The narrator, José Soler, a well-known voice from Radio Barcelona, denounces the rebels as “soldiers without honor, in a sordid alliance with the upper bourgeoisie and the crows of the Vatican-inspired Church”.  

Santos, (1891-1964) was a journalist and film critic. He was also a member of the CNT-FAI (National Labour Confederation-Iberian Anarchist Federation) and made the Reportaje for its Information and Propaganda Office. He used the newsreel format because he felt that it was much better than traditional photojournalism as an educational tool. It was first shown in four Barcelona cinemas on 19 August. Santos would later make Barcelona Works for the Front Lines (Barcelona trabaja para el frente) for a branch of the Central Anti-Fascist Militias Committee and Forging Victory (Forjando la Victoria) for the anarchist production and distribution of Sindicato de la Industria del Espectáculo Films. 

Many of the scenes from the Reportaje would be used in other films made during the Civil War and after. The sad irony is that its horrifying scenes of anticlerical violence, which were intended as denunciations of the Catholic Church, were soon travelling the world as part of the propaganda justifying the Francoist cause.