Eyewitness accounts of the start of the Civil War, 90 years later: 'Our impression was it wouldn't last'

This week 90 years ago, soldiers took up arms and occupied the streets of Barcelona, aiming to control strategic points in the city as part of Francisco Franco's fascist coup d'état.

The military coup had began the day before around Spain, but was just kicking off in the Catalan capital on July 19 at dawn. 

That morning, Joan Escudé planned to go on a hike with friends, but his plans were cut short when he heard shots in the vicinity of Plaça Espanya.

The Civil War had begun, although "the impression in the first days was that it wouldn't last long," Catalonia's oldest man tells the Catalan News Agency (ACN).

Catalonia's oldest woman, Carme Noguera, also believed that the conflict would be brief. They, along with centenarian Núria Bosch, still remember the gunfire, barricades. and attacks on churches that occurred nine decades ago.

Escudé, 110-years-old, explains in an interview looking back at the start of the armed conflict, that from the roof of his house, he saw "people in uniform" in Plaça Espanya that morning. There was an army barracks in the area and he could see "soldiers with rifles on both sides of Gran Via" towards the square at the foot of Montjuïc.

That day she spent hearing gunshots and listening to the radio, and tried to contact friends by phone, but it was impossible, since the line "was cut."

The same day, Carme Noguera, who was almost 22 years old, had planned to go to the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona to continue her nursing studies, but she was unable to do so either.

The next day she did go, and she tells ACN that they had already started to treat "many injured people" from the first stages of the fighting in the city.