Between March 8 and 23, 1937, the Battle of Guadalajara took place, a confrontation in the context of Franco’s offensive for the attempt to capture the city of Madrid. The Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie sent by Mussolini took part in it. Although initially the attack pushed back positions to the Spanish Republican Popular Army, it ended with a counter-offensive assisted by the International Brigades that would finally lead to the retreat of the Italians.
The so-called “first great defeat of Fascism” was a great humiliation for Mussolini, who lost up to 4,000 men in the offensive, as well as almost all the war material, which was abandoned on the battlefield. Moreover, Franco’s General Staff forbade the Italians to take any war initiative and subordinated their troops to Franco’s command, and the Regia Aeronautica to the orders of the German Condor Legion. Mussolini, in an attempt to erase the ridicule of his volunteers, longed for a great Fascist victory, so he redoubled his efforts in the Spanish Civil War.
On June 17 Mussolini himself published in Il Popolo d’Italia a text entitled “Guadalajara” which ended as follows: “It is not possible to say where, when and how. But one thing is certain; certain as a dogma of faith, of our faith: also the dead of Guadalajara will be avenged”. Coinciding with the first anniversary of the Battle of Guadalajara, on March 16, 17 and 18, 1938, the Italian Legionary Air Force, following a direct order from Mussolini, launched an air offensive against the civilian population of Barcelona from its three bases in Mallorca, causing between 880 and 1,300 dead and between 1,500 and 2,000 wounded among the population.
In the personal diary of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Foreign Affairs and son-in-law of the Duce, one can read: “The truth about the bombings of Barcelona is that Mussolini ordered them to Valle in the Chamber, a few minutes before delivering the speech on Austria. Franco knew nothing about them and asked to suspend them, because they create complications with foreigners. Mussolini thinks that they are a very effective way of lowering the morale of the Reds, while the troops are advancing in Aragon”.
Thus, the diptych The discreet charm of bureaucracy shows, as a space of stopped time, two telegrams that begin and end respectively the bombing of Barcelona. They reinforce the administrative paradox that also accompanies a war conflict: war is also administered as if it were an office, and its apparently aseptic bureaucratic cadence contrasts with its terrible consequences. Finally, on the acrylic that frames and protects the reproductions of the documents, a texture unfolds that recomposes in its entirety the map of the bombings over Barcelona.
