The story of this place
In the first days of May 1937, Barcelona's revolution devoured itself. When Republican police tried to seize the anarchist-held telephone exchange on the Plaça de Catalunya at the top of Las Ramblas, the city erupted into street fighting between anarchists and the POUM on one side and Communists and the government on the other. For nearly a week barricades split the boulevards and hundreds died. George Orwell, fighting for the POUM, watched from the roof of the Poliorama theatre on Las Ramblas and later described the fratricide in 'Homage to Catalonia.' The May Days shattered the revolutionary left and tightened Communist control—an internal wound that helped doom the Republic.