[…] other day I was wondering why Winston Churchill wanted the soon-to-be-blitzed British to bear themselves like […]

Perhaps Churchill’s choice of Barcelona over Madrid had something to do with the fact that Spanish Republican government had relocated from Madrid to Valencia early in the war. While the people of Madrid had endured the bombing their leaders had left (given the reality of the Nationalist armies just outside the city a reasonable move). Especially given that the French government had just moved from Paris to Bordeaux before surrendering Churchill perhaps did not want to even subliminally put the idea of his government leaving London in his listeners’ minds. BTW, I remember reading somewhere that during the Spanish Civil War the Nationalist bombers sometimes dropped loaves of bread on Republican territory. The bread was in wrappers that said something like “Bread from your Nationalist brothers”. This was apparantly designed to undermine morale in Republican Spain by lording the relatively better food situation in the Nationalist areas over them. Apparantly it was considered bad form to publicly pick up and eat the loaves, but when people could pick them up with no one else noticing they were quickly devoured.

Churchill was drawing on his “Arms and the Covenant” phase in 1937/1938, when he swung around to supporting the Republic, having started off sympathising with Franco. Almost certainly he picked Barcelona as a example that would appeal to the Left.

Well, as I said it might well just be that Churchill liked the way it sounded. A great orator would always be concerned about that. But I don’t see why brave men of Barcelona is necessarily more alliterative than brave men of Madrid, or courageous citizens of Chungking for that matter! Unless he made notes or said something to somebody about his choice, we probably can’t know.

A couple of other thoughts … the intensive bombing of Barcelona was more recent than that of Madrid’s, by over a year, so he may have thought it more likely to be remembered by his audience. Also, Churchill’s major speeches were always directed at an American audience too, so perhaps the US press coverage of Barcelona vs. Madrid was a factor too.

Surely alliteration has something to do with it …

Good idea! Here’s a quick and dirty test. I searched The Times for headline mentions of Madrid vs. Barcelona from 1 July 1936 to 31 April 1939: Madrid has 442, Barcelona only 209. The disparity is somewhat less if I search the full text instead: 3492 for Madrid vs 2263 for Barcelona. But if I do a full text search on “Madrid AND bombing” and “Barcelona AND bombing”, Barcelona now has more references, 277 to 189. (Using bombed instead of bombing, Barcelona is still ahead but it’s practically even: 230 to 220. Using bombardment instead, Madrid “wins” 173 to 143, but that would include the prolonged artillery bombardment it underwent.) So it does seem that as far as The Times was concerned, Barcelona was a more-bombed city than Madrid.

I think the International Brigades moved around a bit: first based on Madrid, then Barcelona. But they didn’t fight at Barcelona, having already been disbanded by the time the city fell. There’s a map of the British Battalion’s actions here. No doubt Barcelona would figure in a lot of accounts of the brigades anyway (eg Homage to Catalonia), but as noted above Madrid gets more press references overall (it was the capital of the Republic, after all).

I would look into British reporting on the Spanish Civil War, and disposition of the foreign brigades: it could be that he knew his audience would be quickly familiar with it.