Report on the Revolutionary Movement in Barcelona

The film is a valuable document that depicts the situation in Barcelona in the days following the clashes that thwarted the victory of the rebel military forces. Traces of the fighting appear in emblematic locations of the Catalan capital—barricades set up on the main streets or makeshift defenses in buildings. Alongside all this, the images also capture the everyday life of a city that has not lost its usual dynamism. On the other hand, the footage also shows signs of a revolution which, as anarchists like Mateo Santos argued, was underway not only to defeat the rebel military, but also to overthrow the bourgeois society dominated by capitalists and the Church.

One of the clearest signs of this process is the looting of religious buildings. The monastery of the Salesas, where the tombs of the nuns were desecrated and their skeletons displayed at the entrance of the building before an enraged crowd, stands out. Finally, the film also shows the departure of the militiamen to the Aragon front in their improvised vehicles, as they are seen off by an enthusiastic crowd. In these images, we perceive a sense of the present, of immediacy, of unrest, of a revolution in motion. At the same time, they reveal a minimal degree of manipulation in the editing.

The fact that most of the footage allows us to witness events without the guiding hand of directed editing (as was common in Soviet films) immediately presented a problem: as soon as these images fell into enemy hands, they became excellent material for incriminating rebel propaganda and were systematically used to denounce the brutalities committed in the Republican zone. In this way, the images of the Salesas convent were incorporated into numerous films that supported the Francoist cause.

The filmmakers themselves became aware of this issue. Thus, the minimal manipulation of the footage was meant to be counterbalanced by a highly combative narration on the soundtrack. At times, this narration even contradicted what viewers could see on screen. For instance, faced with the grim images of the nuns’ skeletons, the narrator claimed: “The sight of those twisted mummies, tortured and violated, provoked cries of popular indignation.” In short, it was enough to remove the soundtrack or replace it with another conveying an opposing message for the footage to become highly useful to the enemy.

VJB