From the Civil War to the elections of 29 November 2026: ninety years that explain almost every Spanish political debate. From the memory of those shot by firing squad to the amnesty for the separatists.
Each chapter is told twice: at the scale of Spain, then from Barcelona. The city was in turn a Republican stronghold, an occupied city, a centre of opposition and the capital of the procés. The button below keeps only the Barcelona narrative.
Snap general election on Sunday 29 November 2026. Pedro Sánchez dissolved the Cortes on 5 October. This came three days after the rejection of two decree-laws on housing (PP, Vox, Junts and UPN against). During the campaign, demonstrations and rallies are frequent in central Barcelona.
Landmarks · the timeline to scale
The military coup of 18 July 1936 fails in the major cities and splits the country in two. Germany and Italy arm the insurgents. The USSR supports the Republic, which France and the United Kingdom leave alone in the name of non-intervention. Three years later, Franco has won.
Responsibility for the war lies with those who launched the coup. Revolutionary violence in the Republican zone, especially in the summer of 1936, is also documented. Historians estimate it at around 50,000 deaths, against around 130,000 for the Francoist repression, post-war included.
On 19 July 1936, anarchist workers and Assault Guards crush the uprising in the streets. The city lives through months of social revolution: collectivisation, burnt churches, summary executions. In May 1937, anarchists and communists clash here, an episode recounted by George Orwell.
Italian aircraft bomb the city in March 1938. Barcelona falls on 26 January 1939 and nearly half a million people flee to France: the Retirada.
The regime establishes itself through terror: military tribunals, concentration camps, overcrowded prisons, purges of civil servants and teachers. The economy turns in on itself and the country goes hungry. Neutral in the Second World War after sending the División Azul against the USSR, Spain is isolated in 1945, then rescued by the Cold War.
Historians still debate the number of post-war executions, in the order of several tens of thousands. Thousands of victims still lie in mass graves: Spain is among the countries that have exhumed the fewest of their war dead.
Catalan is banned from public life and autonomy abolished. Lluís Companys, President of the Generalitat handed over by the Gestapo, is shot at the Castell de Montjuïc on 15 October 1940. At the Camp de la Bota, on the Besòs beach, more than 1,700 people are shot between 1939 and 1952.
In 1951, a tram strike, sparked by a rise in fares, turns into a mass boycott. It is the first major protest against the regime.
See: Castell de Montjuïc, Camp de la Bota, Fossar de la Pedrera.
In 1959, technocrat ministers linked to Opus Dei open up the economy. Tourism, industry and remittances from emigrants in Europe fund an economic “miracle”. Society changes faster than the regime: strikes, a student movement, a partly critical Church, and ETA turning to armed struggle.
Was the post-1959 regime still fascist? Most historians speak of an authoritarian, military and Catholic dictatorship. It kept the apparatus of repression while abandoning the totalitarian project of the 1940s.
Hundreds of thousands of migrants from Andalusia, Murcia and Extremadura build the outlying districts and the industry of the red belt. The clandestine Comisiones Obreras take firm root there.
In March 1966, students found a democratic union at the Capuchin friary in Sarrià, which the police besiege: the Caputxinada. In 1971 the Assemblea de Catalunya is born, uniting the opposition around three words: liberty, amnesty, statute of autonomy.
On 2 March 1974, the anarchist Salvador Puig Antich is executed by garrotte at the Model prison.
Juan Carlos I appoints Adolfo Suárez, a man of the regime, who dismantles it from within. The Francoist Cortes vote for their own dissolution. Parties, unions and employers negotiate a constitution, against a backdrop of attacks by ETA and the far right.
The Transition was long presented as an exportable model. Since the 2000s, some historians and memory activists have spoken of a “pact of forgetting”. The 1977 amnesty still prevents Francoist crimes from being tried.
On 11 September 1977, more than a million people march for autonomy, according to estimates at the time. On 23 October, Josep Tarradellas, president in exile, returns to Barcelona. From the balcony of the Palau de la Generalitat, he declares: “Ciutadans de Catalunya, ja sóc aquí!”.
The Statute of Autonomy is approved in 1979. In 1980, Jordi Pujol wins the first elections to the Parliament; he will govern for twenty-three years.
The PSOE and then the Partido Popular take turns in power. Spain joins the EEC and NATO, builds its welfare state and its motorways, then experiences a property bubble. ETA terrorism and corruption scandals weigh on the whole period.
The GAL death squads killed 27 people between 1983 and 1987 in the name of the fight against ETA. They were financed with Interior Ministry funds, under a Socialist government. They are a reminder that the rule of law was built slowly, including after 1978.
The 1992 Games reopen the city to the sea, raze the factories of Poblenou and make Barcelona a global brand. The mass tourism that follows is today one of the leading issues in municipal politics.
In 2006, a new Statute of Autonomy is approved by the Catalan Parliament, the Cortes and a referendum. The Partido Popular challenges it before the Constitutional Court.
The financial crisis pushes unemployment above 25%. The Indignados movement occupies squares in May 2011, then gives birth to Podemos. The two-party system collapses in the 2015 elections, and the Catalan crisis becomes democracy’s first constitutional crisis.
For the government of the day and the courts, 2017 was an attack on the constitutional order. For the separatists, it was the exercise of a right to decide denied by the State. Most historians trace the crisis to the 2010 ruling on the Catalan statute and to the economic crisis.
The Constitutional Court’s ruling on the statute in June 2010 is followed by a massive demonstration. From the 2012 Diada onwards, every 11 September brings together hundreds of thousands of separatists.
On 1 October 2017, the National Police and the Guardia Civil charge polling stations. On 3 October, a general strike; on the 8th, a large unionist demonstration crosses the city. More than 3,000 companies move their registered office out of Catalonia in the following months.
In 2020 Pedro Sánchez forms the first coalition government since the Republic, with Unidas Podemos, then with Sumar from 2023. He governs only with the support of Catalan and Basque parties. Vox enters Congress in 2019; the PP comes first in 2023 without being able to form a majority.
For its defenders, the amnesty closes the 2017 crisis and brings separatism back into the institutional game. For its opponents, it was traded for the votes needed for the investiture and weakens equality before the law. The debate concerns its substance as much as the circumstances of its adoption.
The announcement of the sentences, in October 2019, is followed by a week of riots and the occupation of the airport. In the May 2024 elections, the separatist parties lose their majority in Parliament; the Socialist Salvador Illa becomes President of the Generalitat in August.
Carles Puigdemont, who left for Belgium in 2017, has had no arrest warrant in force since October 2026. The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to drop his case under the amnesty.
The Congress of Deputies has 350 seats; an absolute majority requires 176 votes. Elections use proportional representation by province. The system favours large parties in rural provinces and lets concentrated regional parties win seats.
The cards give the seats won on 23 July 2023 and describe each party without forecasting the 29 November vote. The guide takes no side for any party.
Catalonia elects 48 deputies. The landscape there differs from the rest of Spain. The PSC, the Catalan branch of the PSOE, has dominated since 2023, and two separatist parties, ERC and Junts, compete for the same voters.
In 2023, their seven seats each were enough to decide the investiture of the head of government.
Heir to Alianza Popular, founded by former ministers of Franco, refounded in 1989. In power from 1996 to 2004 and from 2011 to 2018. The largest party in 2023, it runs most of the autonomous communities; its president is Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The oldest Spanish party. In power from 1982 to 1996, from 2004 to 2011 and since 2018. Its secretary general, Pedro Sánchez, heads the outgoing government. The PSC is its Catalan branch.
Born of a split from the PP, it entered Congress in 2019. It advocates recentralising the State, a restrictive immigration policy and repealing the memory laws. Most political scientists place it on the far right; the party rejects the label.
A coalition of left-wing parties, led in 2023 by Yolanda Díaz. The PSOE’s partner in the governing coalition from 2023 to 2026.
Born of the Indignados movement, the third force in 2015 and 2016. A partner in the first coalition of 2020. Its deputies, elected on Sumar’s lists in 2023, have sat separately since December 2023.
The party of Macià and Companys under the Republic. Pro-independence, it governed the Generalitat from 2021 to 2024 and generally supports Sánchez’s governments.
Created around Carles Puigdemont, heir to the tradition of Jordi Pujol’s Convergència. Its votes enabled the 2023 investiture in exchange for the amnesty; it voted against the housing decrees in October 2026.
A coalition that includes Sortu, political heir to Batasuna, banned in 2003 for its links with ETA. It now rejects violence; its inclusion in parliamentary majorities remains one of the most contested issues.
The dominant party in the Basque Country since 1980. It negotiates its support for governments of right and left alike, often in exchange for transfers of powers.
The second force in the Parliament of Galicia. It defends the Galician language and greater autonomy.
It defends the archipelago’s interests, its own tax regime and the management of immigration arriving across the Atlantic. Its vote counts in a deeply divided Congress.
It defends Navarre’s foral regime and opposes any rapprochement with the Basque Country. It voted against the housing decrees in October 2026.
Eleven sites, ranked from the most telling to the most discreet. Coordinates are approximate; opening hours marked “to be checked” had not been confirmed on 4 November 2026.
A prison and place of execution under the regime. Lluís Companys was shot here on 15 October 1940, in the Santa Eulàlia moat.
A prison from 1904 to 2017. Thousands of opponents passed through it; Salvador Puig Antich was executed here by garrotte in 1974.
The former quarry into which the bodies of those shot at the Camp de la Bota were thrown. A memorial to the victims and the tomb of Lluís Companys.
The balcony of Tarradellas’s “Ja sóc aquí” in 1977. The square remains the place for major political gatherings.
The galleries devoted to the war, Francoism and the Transition give the Catalan account of everything on this page.
On the former beach where more than 1,700 people were shot between 1939 and 1952, a monument unveiled in 2019 bears their names.
Headquarters of the Francoist political police, where opponents were interrogated and tortured. Declared a site of memory in July 2026, it remains a police station, which memory associations denounce.
An air-raid shelter dug by the residents of Poble-sec during the bombing of 1937–1938.
The church façade still bears the marks of the bomb of 30 January 1938, which killed mainly children sheltering in the basement.
The friary of the Caputxinada of March 1966, where students and intellectuals founded a democratic union while besieged by the police.
The chamber where the declaration of independence of 27 October 2017 was voted, in the former arsenal of Philip V’s fortress.