Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The man needed to choose between chaos and a firm guiding spirit. For a moment the secretary thought about it. Then he dipped his pen in the inkwell.

Ferrer dictated a few hurried lines. Before the ink had dried, Ferrer stamped it with the government seal, grabbed the piece of paper from the secretary, and raised it in the air, proclaiming: “The Crida ! I have it!”

Debate over. Ferrer was lifted into the air and carried out into the street. Outside, he was given an ovation from the crowd, frenzied and ecstatic. I could see this all perfectly, because rather than following them out into the Plaza Sant Jaume, I stepped out onto the balcony.

I saw Ferrer carried aloft on someone’s shoulders, showing the paper with the Crida to the crowd, who swirled around him like a wheel on its axis. I simply couldn’t understand it: They were weeping for joy because now they could go to a desperate war.

All those people carried off Ferrer — or, rather, the Crida —plunging into the city streets. The square was left deserted, covered in debris after the prolonged encampment.

The mentality of your average Catalan shelters one single moral principle, which is as flawed as it is endearing: They are always certain of having right on their side. They aren’t the only people to feel this way. What is extraordinary about the case of the Catalans, however, is what they deduce from this: Given that they are in the right, the world will end up realizing this. Naturally, things aren’t like that. The movement of a train of artillery depends not on truths but on interests, and they are not up for debate: They impose themselves on you, they crush you.

I remember that there were just two sentences. The first of them, to my mind, being the most exquisite, limpid, and beautiful yet written in the Catalan language.

Having on this sixth day of the present month advised this city council to resolve to defend the Liberties, Privileges and Prerogatives of the Catalan people, which our ancestors gloriously achieved at the cost of their own blood, we shall on the ninth day of the present month make order of the public proclamation for our defence

Marshal Starhemberg was surprised to hear the call to arms when he was right on the beach, just about to set sail. From the mouth of the Besòs River, he could see Barcelona’s western walls. He asked the reason for such a ruckus of shouts, drums, and trumpets. “A reckless enterprise,” he said, apparently, “but brave.”

He struck the ground twice with his walking stick and boarded his ship.

He ought to have formulated his words the other way around: a brave enterprise but reckless. And how! Or, rather, he should have said what he was really thinking: “You’re staying here, poor bastards.”

The historians tell us that at the start of the Third Punic War, the city of Carthage went through a military fever. All alone, with no friends and hurtling toward a certain end, the entire might of the Roman Empire was hurled upon them. And yet its citizens threw themselves into laboring for their defense with frantic ardor.

Something similar happened in Barcelona in 1713. A warrior passion overtook the whole city. The foundries beat out a frenzied rhythm. The workshops were turning out rifles, bayonets, projectiles of every size. Most surprising of all: The Barcelonans faced up to their dangers with a happiness that was quite in opposition to their circumstances. Children ran about the battalions, and — in an inversion of the natural order of things — women threw compliments to the soldiers.

There was a reason for this new mood. Barcelona’s popular classes had always felt that dynastic war between Austrians and Bourbons was something basically apart from them. But now war was approaching their walls and threatening to destroy the regimen of freedoms they had maintained for as long as they had been Catalans.

I’d add one more thing besides: By attacking the Barcelona of people like Amelis, Philip V was committing the most unforgivable mistake a tyrant can make: attacking the houses of people who have no houses. They will defend home tooth and nail, for that is the final redoubt of those who have nothing else. My Amelis had spent her life as a wanderer, her sex as her only refuge, and now that she finally had a home, this lunatic despot was threatening to cut her future short. And not just my Amelis; Barcelona was the refuge for the dispossessed from all over. The place where they had at last found four walls and a wage. How many of the heroes born in our siege were foreigners! And now that all the doubts about whether the fight was just and necessary had been dispelled, Barcelonans of all kinds were throwing themselves into this war, their war, with the kind of revelry that doesn’t happen even during carnivals. Just this once, rich and poor, men and women, were united in common cause. The happy were fighting for their happiness, while the unfortunate joined this common cause hoping that, in the struggle, their afflictions would disappear.

We should be impartial: Enthusiasm makes it impossible to see anyone but enthusiasts, and not everybody shared that uncommon euphoria. The indifferent, the fearful, the uncertain, the reluctant, even the occasional pro-Bourbon would keep quiet or hide themselves away, in the hope that times would change. But all the same, what a sense of unity! Fear is contagious — but hope is, too. Because a man like Zuvi, whose senses were so alert, couldn’t but be moved when his Bazoches eyes fell on the smiles of the poor, the wretched, the hungry who — at last — had found a cause to give their whole lives meaning.

Nobody could be more aware than a Bazoches student of how miraculous such a transformation is. Those of us in the business of war, who end up wedded to violence, have always been a tiny minority. In normal conditions, you don’t see anyone bearing a rifle. Actually, human beings are such cowardly creatures that for the most part, they aren’t prepared to risk their lives, even if it’s in order to save them.

One of the days of greatest jubilation was when the reluctant rich abandoned the city. The wealthiest, as one might imagine, didn’t want anything to do with that madness. They’d rather get to the Bourbon lines and throw themselves on Little Philip’s mercy. He wouldn’t deny them. The rich are always welcome.

They gathered in a convoy, like a herd finding safety in numbers. What exactly were they afraid of? The government of Red Pelts had always protected them. They were abandoning their civic obligations; it was public knowledge that they were thinking about heading to the town of Mataró, a well-known refuge for botifleros . And after they were gone, the Red Pelts did not expropriate their homes — inexplicably — but posted guards outside to prevent them from being looted.

On the day of their flight, their opulent carriages gathered on Calle Comerç. Since the convoy had been preannounced, the people were congregating along the roads that led out of the city, jeering and bombarding the vehicles with rotten vegetables. Those crowding onto the balconies scoffed at them and mocked them. But that was all. No acts of violence, nothing more than sarcasm and blackening potatoes launched at the wigs of the poor coachmen. Had the situation been reversed, the Bourbons would not have hesitated to resort to summary executions.

I happened to meet the convoy in its slow progress. The city’s children were using their whole repertoire of taunts on it, which could be tremendous. But the whole thing was a social act in which the festive prevailed over the punitive, and there was three times as much laughter as there was insult.

I was filled with sorrow. Those people fleeing were going to be spared an imminent terrible siege, and I and mine should have been in those carriages, those life rafts amid the shipwreck. All of a sudden I noticed the last carriage stopping beside me.