March 7, 2015

Finest Hour 158, Spring 2013

Page 6

Jordi Marti de Conejeros

In his “Finest Hour” speech of 18 June 1940, Winston Churchill reflected on the trials ahead: “I do not at all underrate the severity of the ordeal which lies before us; but I believe our countrymen will show themselves capable of standing up to it, like the brave men of Barcelona…and carry on in spite of it, at least as well as any other people in the world.”

Churchill was recalling the Spanish Civil War, when Barcelona and 153 other cities and towns of Catalonia suffered hundreds of aerial bombardments.  Aided by German and Italian forces, Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco had bombed the civil population, causing more than 15,000 casualties between 1937 and 1939. Franco’s aim was to secure his dictatorship, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s to blood their troops and test their technology for wars to come. Alluding to Barcelona was Churchill’s way of preparing the British population for likely similar attacks.

During the thirty-six years of Franco’s regime, Churchill’s reference to the courage of Barcelona was not forgotten by the Catalan people, and soon after the first Spanish democratic elections in 1979, many were already talking about building him a monument.

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Thirty-five years later, the city paid its debt to the great man on 15 December, with a garden named for him and a monolith in his memory. Mayor Xavier Trias, Sir Winston’s great-granddaughter Jennie Repard and British Consul General Andrew Gwatkin led 150 people in the unveiling, which was covered widely by the media and published in more than ten newspapers and news websites.

Nowadays, when uncertainty is again the rule and the future often seems dark, Sir Winston’s words and works stretch across the years.  When everything seemed ready to fall apart, he implored his fellow citizens to carry on: to take the best from themselves and fight for a better tomorrow.

In 1931 Churchill wrote of a Spanish King,  Alfonso XIII: “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because, as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others,” as Jennie Repard was most kind to remind us. Let us resolve never to forget them.

Mr. Conejeros is executive coordinator of a newly forming Barcelona chapter of The Churchill Centre. photography by Laura Rueda.