On October 1, 2017, the Spanish police assault on Catalans voting in a peaceful referendum shot Catalonia´s struggle for independence onto the world´s front pages. Today, those two million-plus voters have neither forgiven nor forgotten: the struggle continues.

Catalonia´s national consciousness has deep roots. A People´s History of Catalonia tells this small country´s history, from below, in all its richness and complexity. Catalonia´s struggles for freedom have, for centuries, been violently resisted; and its language and rights, suppressed. Since the nineteenth century, the fight for national sovereignty has often intertwined with working-class mobilisation for social justice. Barcelona became known as the Rose of Fire. In 1936 Catalonia saw one of history´s most profound workers´ revolutions.

From the peasant revolts of the 15th century and the siege of Barcelona in 1714, through the explosive workers´ movement led by anarchists, the defeat in the Spanish Civil War, to the anti-Franco resistance in the grim years that followed, the author tells a compelling story whose ending has yet to be written.