At three in the afternoon, the communist commissioner for public order, Rodríguez Salas, arrived at the Telefónica with three trucks full of assault guards. (It is assumed, but not certain, that he was acting on the orders of the councillor for internal security, Artemi Aiguader.) They surprised the sentries and disarmed them, but were then halted by a burst of machine-gun fire from the floor above. The anarchists fired shots out of the windows as an alarm call and within a matter of minutes news of the event had spread to all the working-class quarters of the city.
Dionisio Eroles, director of the control patrols, went to the Telefónica and tried to persuade the assault guards to lift their siege of the building, but without success. During the next few hours, people began to tear up paving stones and cobbles to make barricades in Las Ramblas, the Paralelo, the old city, the Vía Layetana and also in the outlying
The leaders of the CNT went to the palace of the Generalitat to meet Companys and the chief councillor, Josep Tarradellas. They demanded the immediate resignation of Aiguader and Rodríguez Salas to calm things down, but after a marathon session, which lasted until the early hours of the morning, the negotiations reached a dead end. In the meantime the regional committee of the CNT had declared a general strike for the next day.
The network of barricades which were erected on Tuesday, 4 April, reminded many of the Semana Trágica in 1909 and almost everyone of 19 July 1936. Groups of workers shared out arms on the barricades while others prepared buildings for defence. A German agent of the Comintern in Barcelona reported a week later to Moscow, ‘No vehicle which did not belong to the CNT was allowed to pass and more than 200 police and assault guards were disarmed.’4 Ambulances with large red crosses evacuated the first of the wounded and, because of the random firing, the CNT brought out some of the home-made armoured vehicles from the previous summer. There was fighting on the Paralelo, on the Paseo de Colón, in the Plaza de Palau, in the railway stations and around the building of the Generalitat. The paramilitary police fired from the Colón and Victoria Hotels. Government forces and the PSUC occupied only a few areas in the centre, while the anarcho-syndicalists and their allies controlled the greater part of the city as well as the heavy guns in the fortress of Montjuich.
Whenever the assault guards attempted to seize a building, they were met by a hail of bullets. Firing echoed in the streets from rooftops and balconies, fortified by sandbags. ‘From time to time,’ Orwell recounted, ‘the bursts of rifle-fire and machine-guns were mixed with the explosion of grenades. And at longer intervals, we heard tremendous explosions which, at the time, nobody could explain. They sounded like bombs, but that was impossible because there were no aircraft to be seen. Later they told me–and perhaps it is true–that agents provocateurs had set off large amounts of explosive to increase the noise and sense of panic.’5
In the middle of the afternoon, Juan García Oliver and Mariano Vázquez, the national secretary of the CNT, reached Barcelona with two leaders of the UGT. They had been sent by the government in Valencia to try to find a way out of the very dangerous situation which put the Republic in an extremely embarrassing position, especially vis-à-vis the European press. A meeting was held with the Generalitat, which continued to oppose the forced resignations of Aiguader and Rodríguez Salas. Companys told them that taking into account the turn of events, he saw no other option but to request the Valencia government to take matters in hand, even if this meant the end of the Generalitat’s Council of Defence.
The anarchist leaders made an appeal over the radio for a ceasefire while Abad de Santillán talked to the control patrols.6 The council of ministers met that same evening in Valencia. They decided to appoint Colonel Escobar as government delegate in Catalonia, but he was unable to take up the position due to a serious injury. The communist General Pozas was given command of all the forces on the Aragón front.
