for the Spain they believed to be better: La Fatarella

in La Fatarella Els fets de La Fatarella / the Fatarella's events were a series of violent conflicts that took place in the last days of January 1937 in the village of La Fatarella (Terra Alta) as a result of the resistance of its inhabitants to the attempts to collectivize their lands. On January 24th 1937, the anarquists from the FAI José Mola and Nicolás Santamaría arrived at the town hall of La Fatarella to force the admission of Santamaría as a councilor, but  the peasants concentrated in the square, embraced the anarchists and disarmed them. In the afternoon, a vehicle from the CNT-FAI headed to the town hall to ask for their release, which they got, and they were left at the exit of the village. On the following day,  on January 25th 1937, a thousand armed men belonging to the FAI arrived from the surrounding villages and from Barcelona and met at the Coll de La Salvadora. They  made the children, the old men and the women leave the village and demanded the delivery of weapons. The peasants, accused of the anarchist gang of being fascists, were taken to the chapel and 34 people from the village were murdered. Eighty years later, in January 2017 the victims of the so-called Fatarella’s events finally received the tribute of the institutions: the city council, the provincial government and the Generalitat. These photos were taken in November 2019 and show the austere memorial to the victims of the Fatarella’s events.