«All for God, nothing for politics». Evacuation, arrest and release of the Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer in July 1936

Abstract

On July 21, 1936, Cardinal Francesc d’Assís Vidal i Barraquer, together with his fellows from the Archbishop’s Palace, were evacuated from Tarragona to the monastery of Poblet in an improvised operation by the Generalitat regional delegation. The discovery of the hideout by an FAI patrol that arrived in Vimbodí from L’Hospitalet de Llobregat led to the arrest of the prelate, a fact that triggered a series of events that was resolved with the release of Vidal and Barraquer and his secretary, Canon Joan Viladrich i Viladomat, in a second operation ordered by President Companys. In the ten days between the departure of Tarragona and the embarkation on the Italian ship that would take them into exile, the fate of the Cardinal lies in the midst of many of the conflicts that occurred in those revolutionary moments: the anarchist patrols, the unstable balance between the different families of the political and trade union left in the local decision-making bodies, the difficult role of control of the situation by the Catalan government, the confrontations with reactionary elements (as happened in Solivella) or, in the case of the world of culture and, especially, in the abbey of Poblet, the urgent actions for the salvation of the cultural heritage. In this article, we confront some sources about different witnesses to the episode of the release of Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer in order to elucidate the role played by each party involved.