On Monday 20 November, it will be the opening of the exhibition "Nazis and fascists, the symbolic occupation of Barcelona (1939-1945)”. The exhibition is a harsh, graphic chronicle that makes no concessions to an ill-hidden past. After the fall of Barcelona into the hands of the Francoist troops, the new regime mirrored Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy in order to eradicate any trace of the Red, Republican and Catalanist past of the city.
On 26 January 1939, Barcelona fell into the hands of Franco, putting an end to the three-year long Spanish Civil War. The fact that Barcelona’s public places were invaded with swastikas and acts of fascism can be explained by the obvious complicity of local and provincial authorities, who constructed a network of sympathisers with Hitler’s and Mussolini’s regimes based on mutual recognition. Nazi Germany’s enthusiasm for the new Europe and the Italian fascist regime’s promises for the future were rolled out using a movement based on forceful imagery.