For one moment during the fireworks when the sound of the explosions was echoing against the old walls of the Plac¸a deSant Jaume, I remembered the last time I had heard this square rever-berate with explosions. In the years immediately after Franco died this was one of the places where the demonstrators would gather, and this was where the police would come in jeeploads, complete with batons and rubber-bullet guns and other weapons. I remembered this square in 1976 and 1977, the huge crowds gathering in front of the Town Hall, calling for amnesty, for liberty, for autonomy, the Communists, the Socialists and the Nationalists all united in shouting the same slogans. I remembered how frightened we were when the police would charge into the square wielding their batons, how everyone would rush to one of the exits only to find it blocked and then panic and rush towards another. I remembered one Sunday evening in 1977, how I kept looking behind me as I ran down towards Via Laietana and noticed that two policemen had fixed on me and were making ground. I darted towards Sant Just, and waited there, shaking with fear. I remembered another bright evening when I saw a circle of policemen in the square beating a young girl with batons, hitting her hard, with passion and temper, over and over. We all stood at a safe distance wondering what to do, no one brave enough to intervene.

During all the years of Franco’s reign and for two years after-wards aplaque remained on the wall to the right of the huge door of the Town Hall, telling the citizens of Barcelona that ‘La Guerra Ha Terminado’ –the Civil War had ended and the ‘red army’ had been defeated. Out of this very door, as we stood in the square fifty years later, now came dragons of all shapes and sizes, as though emerging from the jaws of death, breathing fire and making their way across the square. Sometimes they lunged into the crowd, who shrieked in terror and pushed back to avoid the flame. Gangs