(Pluto Press, 2022)

What’s the story behind the Spanish police assault on Catalans voting in a peaceful referendum on October 1, 2017? An assault that shot Catalonia’s struggle for independence onto the world’s front pages.

A People’s History attempts to explain the centuries-long struggles for survival of the Catalan people and the conflicts with Castile and the Spanish state. The book features peasant warriors, bandits, ‘witches’, feminists, singers and anarchists. It analyzes the key moments of Catalan history: the revolution of 1640-41, the year-long siege of Barcelona in 1713-14 and the Spanish Revolution and Civil War of 1936-39. It shows the working-class struggles for social justice that made Barcelona the most militant city in Western Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. And it discusses Catalonia’s national aspirations for greater autonomy or independence.

Kind blurbs and a review:

“This timely and impressive book not only dispels the myths and prejudices about the Catalan people’s struggles, so prevalent in Spain and elsewhere, but demonstrates the constant intertwining of the battles for national rights with peasant and working-class revolt ‘from below’. A thoroughly recommended read.”

Andy Durgan, historian of the BOC and the POUM’s foreign volunteers

“Gives a voice to one of the most rebellious peoples in Europe”

Chris Bambery, Public Point of Enquiry for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Catalonia

“With his latest book, ‘A People’s History of Catalonia’, Eaude has surpassed himself: this highly readable text is nothing less than an all-embracing cultural, historical, literary, military and social history of Catalonia”.

Matthew Tree, Catalonia Today