1936 Catalan coup d'état attempt
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Q5672844
The Catalan coup d'etat was an unsuccessful takeover of power in autonomous Catalonia, planned by the independentist party Estat Català. The conspirators intended to declare the total independence of Catalonia as a state neutral in the Spanish Civil War, and to marginalize all non-aligned political groupings, especially the Anarchists. They counted on party militias and Catalan army and security units, infiltrated by the Estat Català militants. The coup was planned in November, as the plotters assumed that the central Republican government, absorbed by the battle of Madrid, would not be able to take action. The plot failed because of the Anarchist counter-action, which exposed the scheme and some of its leaders. In pre-emptive strike Generalitat services detained a few of the conspirators; the others fled to France. Estat Català was sidelined, while CNT-FAI ensured its dominant position in Catalonia. The attempted coup remains a poorly researched and rather unknown episode; in historiography it is discussed against the background of Catalan fascism.
