The story of this place
The castle crowning Montjuïc hill above Barcelona's port dates from 1640 and was repeatedly used not to defend the city but to dominate it—its cannon bombarded Barcelona during 18th- and 19th-century revolts. As a military prison and execution site it saw the shooting of the anarchist educator Francesc Ferrer in 1909, and after the Civil War Franco's firing squads executed prisoners here, most notoriously Lluís Companys, president of Catalonia, shot in the moat on 15 October 1940—the only democratically elected European president ever executed. The Spanish state ceded the castle to Barcelona only in 2007. Its ramparts now offer sweeping views over the city it once threatened.