Barcelona during the 20th century

During July 1936 the Spanish civil war broke out. The city and Catalonia were Republican, most public services and enterprises were collectivized by the Cnt and Ugt (Unions). During the beginning of the civil war the republican power diminished. Since the city was under control of anarchists. On March 15, 1938 Barcelona got bombed, this happened under the command of Italian dictator Mussolini and these bombs were dropped on request of General Franco. After a battle of a year Barcelona fell into Nationalist Hands on 26 January 1939.

Because of the Nationalistic control Barcelona´s autonomous instructions were abolished and it was not allowed to speak Catalan in public life. Since Barcelona was Spain´s second city, Barcelona got more industrialized. Due to this fact there started a large-scale immigration from the other parts of Spain. This led to rapid urbanizations, area´s like Bellvitge and L´Hospitalet de Llobregat got swallowed up. All the inhabitants of these area´s needed to get to Barcelona, this led to the development of the metro, tarmacing the streets and installation of traffic lights.

In 1970 Barcelona had 1.557.863 inhabitants which lived with 15.517 people on one square kilometer.

After General Franco died, Spain became a democracy. Especially in Barcelona the pressure of change was enormous, since Barcelona and Catalonia suffered the most of his Regime. During the 80´s 90´s Barcelona had 2 major events: 1986 Spanish accession to the European community and the summer Olympics in 1992. These events led to a better international reputation and an increase of tourism.

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