By the Munich agreement of September 29, 1938, the United Kingdom and France allowed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in the face of Hitler's aggressiveness. From that moment on, Republican Spain, fighting against the Francoist insurrection, lost hope for a change of policy on the part of the democracies towards the Spanish question. It was evident that England and France were not going to exert pressure on Germany and Italy to force those countries to reduce their support for Franco.
Furthermore, the British Prime Minister, Chamberlain, continued to allow Italian troops to remain in Spain until Franco triumphed. These circumstances were more than enough reasons for morale to falter both in Catalonia and in the Center-South, the two sectors in which the enemy's advance had split the Republican zone.
The diplomatic advice that Franco received also made it clear that he no longer needed to fear a hostile reaction from France if he advanced to the border itself. Nothing then prevented him from invading Catalonia to cause the collapse of the Republic.
At dawn on December 23, the insurgents crossed the Segre River and advanced towards Artesa de Segre, Les Borges Blanques and other directions, in a front that extended from the Pyrenees to the Ebro River. The two republican armies present in Catalonia, that of the East and that of the Ebro, the latter very broken by the recent battle of the Ebro, suffered constant reorganizations and transfers of units.
Franco's harassment was continuous and systematic in the various axes of the advance, without allowing time for either rest or solid reorganization of the republican units. Inevitably, the retreat turned into a general rout, and some Republican units, composed of new troops, panicked.
Franco's armies were much better supplied with war material than their opponents, who did not receive supplies from the French border or from the Mediterranean ports, constantly beaten by German and Italian aviation.
Exceptionally, Soviet material arrived by rail, above all, a consignment of between thirty and forty very fast Super Flat fighter planes. However, unloading and assembling aviation material, distributing it and ensuring the preparation of personnel to handle it required time that was no longer available.
Nor were reinforcements arriving in Catalonia from the Central Front, where the strategy insisted on maintaining an entire army around Madrid. In any case, taking into account that the Republic was divided in two, it would have been impossible to carry out significant transfers of troops or military material.
During the first week of the attack on Catalonia, the insurgents advanced without much difficulty. Republican forces were able to put up resistance only occasionally. Communication between the large republican units was constantly interrupted. Counterattacks could rarely be organized, although the elite forces, especially those of the Ebro army, commanded by the communist militiamen Juan Modesto, Enrique Líster and Manuel Tagüeña, managed to briefly stop the enemy advance.
After the first fortnight of the campaign, after the capture of the main communications nodes, it could be said that the rest of Franco's advance was like a military parade. Advancing from the south, north and west on an increasingly narrow front, the insurgents quickly reached Tarragona, which succumbed on January 12, 1939, capturing large numbers of soldiers and deserters. According to the memoirs of some Republican military leaders, a high percentage of those called up at that time either did not show up or deserted, which shows an army in clear decomposition.
Franco's troops were advancing in the direction of Barcelona at all points. Inside the city, crowded with civilian refugees, prisoners of justified fears of the repression that the Francoists would impose, morale began to collapse. The explosions of enemy artillery could be heard. There were twenty thousand war wounded not only in hospitals, but also lying on the ground at Sants station and on the subway platforms waiting to be rescued.
Barcelona was the governmental heart of the Republic given the presence there of the president, Manuel Azaña, and the head of the government, Juan Negrín. If the Francoists occupied all of Catalonia, he asked himself, would it mean the end of the conflict or would it be possible to continue fighting in the Central-South area?
On January 23, 1939, Negrín summoned his senior officials. He had to move the entire bureaucratic structure of the government to Girona and, given the lack of transportation, burn the official documentation in huge bonfires.
The news could not be kept secret, and panic spread among the civilian population. Later, a republican military leader, the aforementioned Tagüeña, would write that “the streets that converged towards the French highway were veritable rivers of trucks, carts and cars, and of women, men and children who marched on foot. Infected by fear, they joined the gigantic emigration that bottlenecked all the roads and paths to the north.
By January 24, the army corps of Franco's forces were deployed along the Llobregat River. The ministers and senior republican officials, as well as the military leadership, quickly left Barcelona.
A certain number of military units had received orders to defend Barcelona, or, at least, to ensure a controlled evacuation. However, it was decided to withdraw the Assault guards and the carabinieri to allocate them to the defense of Girona. General Hernández Saravia and his successor as head of the Republican Army Group, Colonel Jurado, were not able to organize a staggered resistance.
Among the reasons for the rapid collapse of Barcelona's defense must be included the exhaustion of the civilian population, morally exhausted by hunger, bombings and military disasters.
The rebels soon occupied the city. On the 25th, generals Juan Yagüe and José Solchaga and the Italian Gastone Gambara crossed the Llobregat. The next morning, the Francoists had already surrounded the northern and western sectors of Barcelona. Navarrese and Italian forces established themselves in Tibidabo, while Yagüe's troops ascended to Montjuïc Castle, where they freed 1,200 prisoners.
Franco's patrols began to enter Barcelona, at first, cautiously. Would there be resistance? No. The Republican soldiers they encountered in the streets threw down their weapons, surrendering. Since midday the victorious columns were entering the great city, in whose center a campaign mass was celebrated, filmed by the news.
The Republican troops retreated towards the border in long columns or in small groups, taking with them the war material they could: cannons, machine guns and mortars, in trucks or loaded on mules. Immense crowds of refugees accompanied them. The human flood slept wherever they could, in farmhouses, in abandoned houses, in churches and even on the sidewalks or under the trees in the countryside. Food was scarce, and there were women who gave birth, and wounded, sick, and elderly people who died.
What remained of the republican State was briefly established in the geographical triangle formed by Girona, Olot and Figueres. All efforts to form strongholds of resistance failed. On February 5, the presidents of the Republic, of the Generalitat of Catalonia (Lluís Companys), of the Basque Country (José María de Aguirre) and of the Cortes of the Republic (Diego Martínez Barrio) crossed the border.
Between February 5 and 9, the remains of the two republican armies did the same. On the 9th, Franco's troops arrived at Le Perthus, a town halfway between Spanish and French territory.
Different authors offer contradictory figures on the number of soldiers and non-combatants who crossed the border and were interned in camps on the French beaches, exposed to the inclemencies of winter. The maximum figure is half a million. According to a French report, between January 28 and February 10, 1939, a total of 440,000 Spaniards entered French territory, of which 220,000 were combatants, 10,000 wounded, 40,000 non-combatant men and 170,000 women and children.
