Barcelona & Catalonia Cinderellas

400 years of the victory of the Christian Holy Alliance fleet against the Turks at the Lepanto battle October 7th, 1571. The Christian flagship, "Galera Real" ("Royal Galley"), was built at Barcelona's shipyard.
There, now Barcelona's Sea Museum, it can nowadays be seen a live-size replica of the said ship. Cinderella issued by Barcelona province gov.

On the stamp fair Barnafil'78, held between Set. 29th and Oct 5th 1978, Barcelona's Stamp Dealers Gild, issued two sheets of 4 cinderellas with the title "Segells d'Història de Catalunya" (Catalonia's History stamps). The price, 25 pessetes (our currency up to 2001) each.

On these two there can be seen relevant Catalan people from the XIII and XIV centuries.







Jaume I (1208-1276) Count of Barcelona, king of Aragon, València and Mallorca. One of the keysones of Catalan Nation.



Sant Ramon de Penyafort (1175-1275). Scholar and priest. Founder of the order of la Mercè



Ramon Llull (1233-1316). Priest and mystic writer. The father of literary Catalan language



Roger de Flor (1262-1305). Soldier

Barcelona, 1974. 50 years of BArcelona's stamps & coins collectors' Club. Cercle Filatèlic I Numismàtic de Barcelona. Text on (1939-1975 compulsory) Spanish language.

On the cinderella there can be seen the club's seal and a 1936 Barcelona City Council stamp, showing the city house Gothic (1399) façade.

Greetings all!

Yesterday, I received a kind email from Cursus, in which he offered me help on a mysterious Spanish Civil War letter I have in my possession. The letter is written in Catalan and, I suspect, sets up a secret meeting between two individuals using code words. As is well known by philatelists collecting postal history, all mail was highly censured in Spain during that time -therefore, the need to use some deception. Rather than keep this conversation private, I thought of bringing it here, in case others might find it interesting.

This afternoon, I looked through all pages of this thread and found this forum quite interesting. My connection to it, however, limits itself to the Republican (anti-fascist) vignettes that were issued by political interests/union entities as well as villages/towns/cities that used them to raise funds for refugee help, protection of civils, and sometimes, even as postage. To be clear, my collection is completely focused on these republican vignettes issued between 1936-1939 and therefore overlaps material here when they were issued from Catalunya. My grand-parents on my mother's side were from there, and through collecting the vignettes actively over the last four years, I have learned much about the land from which they came.

OK -let me show you the letter, which in the heading contains an image that was used many times (as I will show) on Catalonian civil war era vignettes. Accompanying this letter, I compare its "vignette" with another one that appeared in the corner of an envelope (I only have the cut-out). Both are extremely rare. They were issued by the Socorro Rojo International, essentially the communist red aid, or, more accurately, by Socors Roig Internacional, its Catalan division, to help the victims of fascisms. This organism can be considered an equivalent of the Red Cross, I believe. So here are the two vignettes, followed by the letter

And here is the letter in question ...

Finally, I am uploading the other vignettes that I have in this theme. The design is the same, with a nurse holding an injured infantryman. We also see a woman and child in need, likely the wife and child of the soldier. These dramatic images are on the red star emblem with the letters S.R.I. in red in the background.

Cheers!

In this image, the first two are common; the other ones are rare enough. Although one refers to Madrid, "Diada de Madrid" is Catalan and means Madrid's Special Day. Maybe someone knows to which day this refers to as I don't!



In this second set, all are common except for the overprints (in this respect, many types of overprints exist as well as a 25 cts one which I am missing).

Welcome to our new Canadian (also, Catalan) friend with his worthy contribution to the thread with many very interesting 1936-39 war cinderellas, that I didn't know.
It, for sure has helped this thread to overcome the 170.000 readings mark. Thank you very much to all of you.

Relating to the "Diada de Madrid" item, it should be understood that right from the bening of the war, the city of Madrid was besieged by the fascist upraised army. The fighting reached the outskirts of Madrid.
The brave Madrid people strongly oposed the foe, right up to theend of the war in late March 1939. Soldiers were going to the battle front by using trams (while they were operating).

Catalonia, 600 km away, did it best to support Madrid fight, sending soldiers, weapons and all kind of supplies. Funds, were raised on special days. The "Diada de Madrid" cinderella, might have been issued for one of these days; hence, the text.

Yes, there must have been a special day organized to raise funds for Madrid, and the vignette given to those who contributed. I like that one very much.

I will look through my albums and contribute a few "Ayuda a Madrid" vignettes that I have as it is a recurring theme.

The successful defense of Madrid at the beginning of the war was a great humiliation for the fascist army. The republic fought them to a standstill, though at great cost. For those interested in reading a personal account of a British soldier who found there along with a small group of English comrades embedded in the Thaelmann Battalion (part of the International Brigades), I recommend Esmond Romilly's "Boadilla".

I've read and fully understood the above letter (it's written on my own language,82 years ago). I'm also very familiar with the Barcelona places that are on the text. In fact, I'm writting it from a place just a 5-10 minutes walk to any of them. I know the literary quotations too.
I'm sorry to disapoint our friend, but I can only see a letter from a homesick boy perhaps on the war front (the battle of river Ebre, was about to start) to a missed girlfriend on their town.
Born in Barcelona, less than 20 years after the war's end and having been raised by people (all my relatives) who underwent the war in Barcelona or Catalonia, my feeling it that the % of heroes was very low. Most people just were striving to survive the nightmare.

But, it's a very interesting piece of history.

Thank you so much for providing your insights into the meaning of the document. Of course, this would be the type of letter a heartbroken or homesick boy on the battlefront would write. I guess I overinterpreted some parts of the letter which I didn't fully understand. Yes, there were few heroes.

Calella (35 km NE of Barcelona), June 1986. Topical Stamp exhibition. The cinderella shows a Calella'a landmark.

Thank you so much for posting this beautiful vignette from Calella, the town where my grandfather was born

In my collection, I have two fiscal (municipal) stamps from Calella that were used around the time of the civil war.

I am also showing two other pretty Catalan vignettes, one from a neighbourhood in Barcelona (Poble Nou) and the other from the city of Tarragona, issue to raise funds for Christmas and the winter months.

As I have a large number of civil war vignettes from many Catalan villages and towns, if there is any one place you are particularly interested in, I am happy to see what I have and post it here. Hopefully, I can comply.

I'm glad that you liked the Calella cinderella. It comes on a 4 units mini-sheet. I remember visiting that Topical Philately exhibition back in 1986-
Thank you very much for the interesting items that you posted. The Tarragona cinderella, looks also as an Esperanto one, due to the green five points star.

Please, feel free to post any other Catalan cinderellas that you might have. After more than 9 years and about 1000 posts, I'm running out of interesting items. So, some "fresh air", would be most welcomed. Thank you very much!

Here, I post a dull-looking but very interesting vignette related to a school in Barcelona from a neighbourhood where our friend Joan lives. Although a Catalan vignette, it is written in Spanish, likely due to students from many places in Spain that were going to the school during the war. Joan can tell us more about the vignette.

Answering the request from our friend, let's start from the begining.

The issuing body was a Republican Learner's Brotherhood (aka association/union). "Martinense" stands for someone from the old village of Sant Martí de Provençals, next to Barcelona, that was annexed to our city in 1897. It was an area with so many factories that between 1850 and 1950 it was called "The Catalan Manchester". This, from late XIX century attracted many workers from Spanish speaking areas of Spain, who didn't speak Catalan. For this reason a lot of printed matterials from the workers' unions and brotherhood, are written in Spanish. The main ideology in unions in Catalonia was anarchism.
As there were no schools for workers, unions had organisation to, at least teach workers to read and write. This was done after the long working hours. A lo of "teachers" were printing works workers; that, because of their job, hada a better instruction.

It's most likely that such organisations existed in Sant Martí de Provençals before 1939. After Franco's victory in early that year, all workers' organisations were banned.