Francoist purging of nomenclature in Barcelona: Communion, wishes and beliefs1

Abstract

As in the rest of Spain, the capture of Barcelona by Franco’s troops not only meant the defeat of the Republican side, but also a systematic persecution of all political, social and cultural references of the defeated regime. Barcelona’s first Francoist city council was an active agent from the first hour, purging municipal officials and also trying to erase all Republican, Catalan or ‘red’ traces in the public space and replacing them with new references that would make the official memory of the new regime. Our research clearly outlines how the Francoist overhaul of Barcelona city nomenclature was conducted, and the criteria on which it was based. In summary, it was a very early, fairly rapid and high-priority operation based on wiping out the Republican memory and Catalan language and exalting the heroes and martyrs of the ‘Crusade’, in which the leading figures were a small group of local but renowned faithful people. It was, without doubt, what one might term an ideological operation, carried out with full awareness of the symbolic importance of the issue.