ABSTRACT
The possibility of a 'return to the barricades' had gained currency in the spring of 1937 as a consequence of reflections on the lost opportunity and errors of the previous July, which even Diego Abad de Santillan acknowledged had 'revived' the state apparatus. A simple explanation for the events, amply attested to by eyewitnesses, participants and subsequent histories, is that the neighbourhood defence committees of the libertarian movement mobilised their forces. The mobilisation in defence of the revolution had revealed to the participants the opportunity to deliver a comprehensive blow to the counterrevolution in the city. Clara and Paul Thalmann, stationed behind a barricade at the open-air flower market on La Rambla on the first night of the fighting, recalled that the workers there were convinced that 'now the end had arrived for the Stalinists in Cataluna'. The bleak prediction of the radicals regarding the consequences of in action proved correct.
