Negrín and the Fall of Barcelona

On 26 January 1939, Barcelona falls to Franco's Nationalists. Catalonia collapses, and nearly 450,000 refugees — soldiers and civilians — pour back toward the French border in the debacle of the Retirada. The Republic now holds only the Centre-South zone, around Madrid and Valencia.

The head of government, Juan Negrín, must settle on a line. Should he prolong resistance in the hope that a European war, which he judges imminent, will turn the Spanish conflict into one front of a wider struggle against fascism and force the democracies to intervene? He has set out thirteen peace conditions, but London and Paris hold back.

Many in his own camp no longer believe it. Exhausted officers and Socialists want to negotiate a surrender to spare blood and obtain guarantees against reprisals. The Republican army is bled white, supply has collapsed, morale is shaken. Negrín must decide: press on with all-out resistance, seek a negotiated peace to limit the bloodbath, or organise the orderly exile of the Republican leadership? The fate of hundreds of thousands of fighters hangs on it.