19/10/2025
2 min

On January 25, 1939, the last press release of the Generalitat was written. It was written by journalist Antoni Vilà Bisa, head of the press office. He wasn't supposed to do it himself. It was his brother Joaquim's turn, who held the position, but he died in a bombing raid in 1938. The last official note reads as follows: "The honorable President of the Generalitat, Mr. Lluís Companys, received a visit this afternoon from the President of the Territorial Court, Mr. Josep Andreu Abelló, with whom he held an exchange of views." The release was not published: on the 25th, the newspapers no longer appeared.

On the night of January 24-25, an urgent meeting of all the remaining newspaper directors in Barcelona was held. The meeting was called by General Juan Hernández Sarabia, who had all the Republican troops in Catalonia under his command. An "open city" is declared: "It is ordered that the local press cease publication as of the afternoon of January 25, 1939." Barcelona is already a ghost town with the keys in the air.

The new immigration lands on the 26th. Mission: to occupy everything. From January 28 to June 7, 1939, the new regime carries out 1,399 registered searches (there were many more undocumented ones) of the 1,960 planned. They loot everything: the Generalitat, political parties, media outlets, associations, people... And they keep everything. Papers, objects, real estate... And they also destroy whatever they please, or do personal business. From all these searches, more than 4,000 urgent files of individual criminal records emerge. Translated: arbitrary sentences. In prison, disqualifications, sanctions, death...

This week marked the 85th anniversary of the assassination of Lluís Companys. The same week, on a Catalan-language program on La 2 Cat, a journalist said that José Manuel Lara Hernández, the founder of Planeta, arrived in Barcelona in 1939, like so many people from Andalusia did around that time. I'd say the problem with all that narcotic, illiterate, toxic potboiler is that no one wants to know that it all started long before.

In 1938, Catalonia was already occupied by Ponent. On April 3, the city of Lérida fell. And on April 9, in Burgos, Manuel Carrasco y Formiguera were assassinated, the ultimate example that this is a war against Catalonia, against all of Catalonia: against Catholics, Catalanists, tightrope walkers, plumbers, contortionists... The first thing I can confirm is that he writes about Carrasco's assassination during the reign of terror that ruled the country. Yes, the philosopher. With peppers the size of cathedral bells, he says:

"The example of the gasping death of the great Carrasco's life is evident, as his paternal surname demonstrates. Of Castilian origin, he knew how to die for Catalonia as the most rooted of Catalans. Descended on his father's side from the lands of the free... If, driven by the deadly hatred that inspires and guides him, Castilian Spain, stuck in the 16th century, were to raze Catalonia and kill all the Catalans without a trace, after years or centuries, those who lived there, even if they had been torn from the heart of Castile itself, would find the ideal again. Because if we go back: 1937, 1936... We can prove that nothing has returned and that many have died. Carrasco does not matter, Companys does not matter from here, and so we will continue... until the total neuronal occupation: the immigrants of 1939 came to raise Catalonia.

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