"Bullanga" of Reus In
Reus, a liberal city in the middle of a territory favorable to Carlism, hostility towards the members of the regular clergy, especially towards the
Franciscans, dated back to the Ominous Decade of the reign of
Ferdinand VII when they denounced the liberals and fomented the
uprising of the Agraviados of 1827. In fact, during the summer of 1834, when the
massacre of friars in Madrid in 1834 took place, there was also a rumor, as in Madrid, that the friars had poisoned the city's wells and had caused the
cholera epidemic. Some witnesses of the time recall that the friars were so unpopular that they could hardly circulate in the streets without being insulted. The refrain of a popular song entitled "
Sanch y fetge menjarem" ('blood and liver we will eat') was "
Y morin los caps pelats" ('let the bald heads die'). What motivated the "
bullanga" in Reus was the attack suffered on July 19, 1835 by a party of urban militiamen by a Carlist party, in which the second lieutenant J. A. Montserrat and four urban militiamen died (plus an ensign and two volunteers from
Gandesa), since apparently among the attackers there were friars and one of them had ordered to crucify and remove the eyes of one of his victims. This is what the historian
Antonio de Bofarull states: Having killed six soldiers and an urban officer... the attackers had entertained themselves in crucifying them, gouging out their eyes and other barbarities, on the advice of one of the friars who was in the group.The climate of tension that arose when the facts became known caused the military governor of the
province of Tarragona to immediately send a detachment of 200 soldiers at the request of the mayor and the superiors of the convents. This did not prevent that during the night of July 22 several convents were assaulted and set on fire where twelve Franciscan friars and nine Carmelites were killed. The army did not intervene in these events. This is how a chronicler of the time explained it:At half to eleven o'clock at night the town of Reus was disturbed, shooting bullets at the air, and immediately the individuals were all together, and the first thing they did was to surround the convent of San Francisco and, when the friars saw this, they rang the bell three times for help, trusting the troops that had come for their protection, which could not calm them down, because they saw that it would be bad for them.This is how the liberal newspaper
El Eco del Comercio reported the news: At 10 o'clock at night, gathering in one of the many and growing groups that had scattered in the town, after having forcibly removed all the fuel they could find from the brick kilns. There was an infinity of women loaded with firewood and carrying large pots full of turpentine oil and other highly inflammable materials. Thus assembled, they ran in droves to San Francisco, set fire to the building, and at the same time stabbed with knives as many friars as they could find.According to Antonio Moliner Prada, the ultimate cause of the riot was to be found in "the
anti-clericalism that was felt in many places, as well as the help that some convents gave to the Carlists, or the importance that a future disentailment could have".
"Bullanga" of Barcelona on Sant Jaume's day. in
Barcelona today. The repercussions of the anticlerical riot of
Reus spread throughout the regions of the
province of Tarragona, and also reached Barcelona, where as in Reus there was a strong anticlerical feeling especially among the popular classes who were bearing the burden and the "blood" of the civil war while many of the friars were on the side of the Carlists, whom they helped economically and some of them even took up arms. In the streets of the city it was common to hear songs like "
Mentre hi hagi frares, mai anirem be" ("While there are friars we will never go well") or to call them "
paparres" ("ticks") and sometimes they even received "
trunks, stones and even some bricks and a slap", according to a canon. It was a minor incident in Barcelona that triggered the riot of July 25. The public attending a bullfight for the day of Sant Jaume began to destroy the square of Barceloneta -when the fifth bull arrived they tore up benches and chairs and threw them into the square - because the bulls had been tame and when the bullfight ended they dragged the sixth dead bull through the streets of the city, stoning the convents of
La Merced and
San Francisco in the process. At the same time, another group burned down the "
caseta de los consumos" (the place where the municipal officials, "burots", collected the hated taxes for the entrance of merchandise into the city) and then, led by the well-known liberal
Manuel Rivadeneyra, they tried to attack the convent of San Francisco, but they only managed to burn the doors. Late at night several groups set fire to six convents: that of the Discalced Trinitarians -where today is the Liceo-, that of San José of the Discalced Carmelites -where today is the market of
La Boquería-, that of the Augustinians in Hospital street, that of the Carmelites in Carmen street, that of San Francisco de Paula of the
Minims, in Sant Pere street, and that of the Dominicans in Santa Catalina -where today is the market of the same name-. Other religious buildings were attacked, but without being set on fire, as in the case of the seminary of San Vicente de Paul on Amalia Street, where friars and seminarians managed to confront the attackers with clubs and firearms. The assaults on these convents in some cases were carried out at the same time, so they were the work of different groups. Many friars escaped and were picked up by the army and the urban militia who transferred them to the
castle of Montjuic, but others did not make it and 16 of them were killed. . Neither the army nor the urban militia intervened since, according to historian Antonio Moliner Prada, their members sympathized more with the rioters than with the religious, and some of them even participated in the riots. On the other hand, the City Council, despite the fact that it was constituted in permanent session, also failed to carry out any coordinated action with the forces of order to prevent the riots. "The records of the City Council (July 25 at night) reflect that still at 1.30 a.m. neither the firemen nor the military force had made an appearance in order to suffocate and prevent the fires in the convents". Only the following day, July 26, "the authorities took some measures to restore order: they published a proclamation that avoided any responsibility for the events of the previous day, arrested some people, ordered the dissolution of the groups of people who remained in the streets, ordered the closing of the entrance gates to the city to prevent the entry of people from nearby towns, and urged the bosses to open their factories and workshops". The liberal newspaper
El Vapor explained with a notable detachment and without providing many details of what had happened, nor of the death of "a few" friars: On the afternoon of the 25th the people went on a rampage in the bullring, on the occasion of the bulls being too peaceful to give interest to the fight. From there they went out in droves to set fire to the convents of this capital. The fire caught fire in six of them (...) Nothing was stolen. A few regulars perished in the midst of the confusion of the disorder. The authorities ordered the formation of the garrison and the militia in order to avoid damages. One of their wise measures was to gather the communities and transfer them to the fort of
Atarazanas and from there to the fort of Monjuí [sic], where they remained safe."The liberal pamphlets of the time repeatedly insist that the priests and the nuns' convents did not suffer any attack, nor were there any robberies during the
bullanga. (...) F. Raull insists that all the work was carried out in perfect order before numerous surprised and dumbfounded spectators and others who rejoiced at what they were contemplating. (...) The account of the events published in the London newspaper
The Times of August 7, whose author witnessed the assault on these convents, also coincides with these appreciations:The confusion produced by the circumstances and the numerous attempts at robbery were overcome by the impetus shown in this horrible work of destruction. The arsonists did not appropriate any money or objects of value. The gold and silver chalices and other objects of great value were thrown into the fire as soon as they were found, and one individual was bludgeoned almost to death for having kept a silk handkerchief.As for who were the perpetrators of the events, there is no judicial documentation that allows identifying them because, unlike the
massacre of friars in Madrid in 1834, no person was tried after the
bullanga, and as for whether behind the events there was some secret society that instigated them or it was a spontaneous movement, historians disagree among themselves. Those who defend the conspiratorial thesis affirm that everything was prepared in a secret meeting that took place in a house located in the Rambla de Santa Monica and that the rioters, who were paid, were given the incendiary material. According to the newspaper
Panorama Español, the action against the convents was prepared beforehand: As night fell, some convents began to be assaulted by mobs who had everything ready for the arson.... The night of July 25 was a night of horror and terror. The resounding clamor of the mobs that gave the assault, or celebrated the triumph, could be heard everywhere; the trampling of the horses and the shouts of the chiefs that demanded order filled the intervals of silence left by them.... Few, very few were those who committed these vandalic attacks, but the spectators were infinite.Ana María García Rovira, on the contrary, affirms that the movement was spontaneous, although she points out that prominent liberals, such as the printer and publisher M. Rivadeneyra, participated in the uproar, trying to organize the popular unrest. Thus, among the rioters there were not only members of the popular classes but also wealthy people who were confronting a common enemy, the friars. This same point of view is defended by
Josep Fontana, for whom it seems clear that "a group of liberals, dissatisfied with the regime of the
Royal Statute, allowed it to happen, thinking that this explosion of popular unrest could be useful to accelerate the political evolution in its advanced sense". To reinforce his thesis, he quotes the testimony of a witness of the events as he related it years later: Anything is enough to determine a popular riot when the people are ready to riot. The heated multitude already runs without restraint and during the night sets fire to several convents, kills some friars, and the military authority canonizes with its presence this scandal, as it had canonized the riot and the disorders of the bullring. The people are still alive who, with the ruling baton in their hands, contemplated both scenes, and do not believe, gentlemen, that there is any exaggeration in this, because I was in the square and I remember very well how shocked I was to hear that the authority ordered those who were tearing up the benches to try not to harm themselves (...) It was a question of overthrowing a ministry [a government] and of embarking on a different path from the one that this ministry was following (...).A similar line is the one maintained by Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón who emphasizes that in the riot participated relevant social sectors "that lead the popular anger". As evidence, he points out that in the convents "incendiary bottles of turpentine were used, like "Molotov cocktails", which someone had prepared" and that it was repeated, as in the
massacre of the friars in Madrid in 1834, "the institutional quietude of the militia and troops and of the authorities". Likewise, the riot was "a collective action of punishment and also of prevention against some friars transformed in the popular imagination as the only cause of the war and its hardships". The same day of the riot of Barcelona "the government of the
Count of Toreno decreed the suppression of convents with less than twelve professed religious, but it was also an insufficient measure because it neither suppressed the religious orders, a requirement to nationalize their goods, nor did it adjust to the facts already consummated. Power was no longer in the hands of the regent, but in the hands of the juntas that assumed the revolutionary character of defense and sovereignty in each city. For this reason, this time the government could not open a trial for the violence deployed against the friars in Barcelona. Moreover, the events were explicitly justified and once again the Eco del Comercio leads us to the conclusion that such violence was intended: "
the punishment of these excesses alone is not enough [...] it cannot rely exclusively on repression, as it has not been possible to rely on it to this day. There is [...] no other more effective means than the prompt suppression of religious communities". on the streets of Barcelona ,
captain general of Catalonia at the time of the
bullangas of the summer of 1835. After the riot of July 25 and the early morning of July 26, calm did not return to Barcelona. One of those responsible was Captain General
Manuel Llauder who stirred up the most radical sector of the liberals and the popular strata when in a fleeting appearance in Barcelona he published a proclamation in which he threatened to punish those guilty of the assaults on the convents. On August 5, events were precipitated when the new military governor of Barcelona, General Bassa, was assassinated by rioters, without the urban militia or the troops doing anything to defend him. Then his corpse was thrown from a balcony, dragged through the streets and burned. The statue of
Fernando VII that had been placed in the Plaza del Palau by the previous captain general, the
Count of Spain, was also destroyed, and the consumption booths were also burned. The next day the
factory El Vapor, recently installed in Tallers street by the company Bonaplata, Vilaregut, Rull y Cía. It seems that the factory fire was an act of "
ludismo" as an observer of the time warned in an article that appeared in El Vapor six months later: "I do not know that in the popular movements the plebs go to the treasuries or bank houses, doing it very often to the production establishments whose machines make personal work unnecessary". This is also confirmed by the report written by the military governor of Barcelona, General Pastor, about what happened: The authorities, upon learning that the rioters were attempting this attack, sent all the force they could muster, in order to stop the fire; but to no avail, because they were determined to do so, convinced that the looms moved by machines diminished the production of manual labor. The owners of the factory, who had been fearful of this attack for days, had been forewarned by a guard of their own employees, who prematurely set fire to the rioters, which exasperated them and increased their insolence. The troop that was to contain them got in the way and as a result of the scuffle several were killed and wounded, leaving the camp for the besiegers. The flames of this fire somewhat injured the tobacco factory, which fortunately, and with the help of construction workers, could be saved, but not five or eight small houses, attached to the same factory, which were burned.The liberal press of Barcelona, such as
El Brusi,
El Catalán and
El Vapor, which had scarcely reported the anticlerical riot of July 25, on the other hand, did report extensively on the fire at the
Bonaplata factory, condemning the event. This would prove, according to Antonio Moliner Molina, "that they looked favorably on the attacks on the convents".
"Bullangues" in the rest of Catalonia after the "
bullangues" of the summer of 1835. The news of the Reus riot spread quickly. "In
Valls there were no murders because the mayor, J. Tell, prevented it with a detachment of "''
mossos d'Esquadra''". In
Vila-seca the attacks of the crowd were directed against the properties belonging to the
cathedral chapter of Tarragona and the
archdeacon of that town, which were looted on August 6. (...) Many religious abandoned the convents and took refuge in private houses or in the mountains. Thus the friars of
Riudoms, the Carmelites and Augustinians of
La Selva, the Franciscans of
Alcover and
Escornalbou, the
Carthusians of
Scala Dei and the
Cistercians of
Poblet managed to save themselves. However, on July 23rd the convent of Riudoms was set on fire, on the 25th that of Scala Dei and days later that of Poblet". In Tarragona on July 27 Archbishop Echanove was attacked and managed to take refuge in an English frigate where he stayed for three days, finally managing to transfer to another ship that took him to
Mallorca and, not being safe there either, he disembarked in
Mahón on August 4. In a letter he addressed to
Pope Gregory XVI, he exposed the atmosphere of hostility towards the clergy in Tarragona:...since the multitude of anarchists and assassins (...) were preparing to attack the threatened beheading of the archbishop and then that of the
canons (...) Insults, mockery, threats and other mistreatments were lavished on the clergy, not excepting myself. The most horrendous blasphemies and ungodly contempt were frequent and public. The temples of the Lord were profaned, turning them into fortifications for the defense of the regular troops of the so-called
migueletes and
urbans."Days after the fires in Barcelona, other convents in Catalonia were assaulted and set on fire, such as the
Capuchin monasteries in
Sabadell,
Mataró,
Arenys de Mar and
Vilafranca del Penedès, the
Hieronymites of
El Valle de Hebron and
Murtra, the
Discalced Carmelites of
Cardó, as well as the
Carthusian monasteries of
Montalegre and
Scala Dei, the
Benedictines of
Sant Cugat and
Santa Maria de Ripoll and the
Cistercians of
Poblet and
Santes Creus. Nor was the
monastery of Montserrat spared from being sacked after the monks abandoned it on July 30." "In total 22 religious and 8 secular priests were killed, which added to those killed previously in Reus and Barcelona amount to 67, distributed as follows: 3 Benedictines, 2 Carthusians, 2 Trinitarians Calzados, 3 Carmelites, 18 Franciscans, 4 Dominicans, 3 Mercedarians, 5 Augustinians, 1 Capuchin, 12 Discalced Carmelites, 1 Discalced Trinitarian, 1 Pauline, 4 from other religious orders and 8 priests. During the first days of August several anti-clerical uprisings were repeated in Murcia. As a result of such persecution and violence against the religious, and to a lesser degree against the priests, some parish priests abandoned the churches of their towns and sought safe refuge in other places". == Consequences ==