During the Spanish Civil War, in 1937, the purification commissions were created which had to ideologically clean all public, popular, school libraries and reading rooms in Spain. Their mission was to remove books and other pornographic materials, revolutionary propaganda or the dissemination of subversive ideas and literary and scientific works that could be harmful to naive or unprepared readers, as the Order said.
In Figueres, one of these commissions was created in 1939 and, despite librarian Adela Riera's brake, they were removed from the Biblioteca Popular about 200 books on various subjects: philosophy, religion, political thought, science, fine arts, history and literature. The selected books remained in the library, removed from consultation, until July 1941, when they were claimed by the Diputació de Girona. Finally, in December 1999, the Girona Historical Archive handed over a hundred of these works to the Central Library of Girona, which were returned to the Figueres Library.
This material has been cataloged and we present it virtually. You will be able to access the covers and bibliographic data. The purge was so massive that there are almost no copies left in any Catalan public library, with the exception of some titles in Les Borges Blanques, Cervera, Olot, Reus, Tarragona, Tortosa, Vendrell and Figueres. Some of those that have been preserved in Figueres are:
Togliatti, Palmiro. The fight against fascism and war: the preparation of a new world war by the imperialists and the tasks of the Communist International. Barcelona [etc.] : Ediciones Sociales Internacionales, 1937Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emilio, or, Education. Buenos Aires: The Library, [19--]Prous i Vila, Josep Maria. Poems of the revolution. Barcelona: Forge, 1937
Access the list of purged works here
Access the list of returned works here
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Comas, Montserrat. Biblioteques en temps de guerra. [Calafell] : Llibres de Matrícula, 2008
Gudayol, Anna. "El Salvament de les biblioteques catalanes durant la Guerra Civil : les "notes" de Jordi Rubió"
Roig, Sebastià. “Figueres 1936, la guerra dels llibres”, Revista de Girona, núm. 264, p. 40-44
Roig, Sebastià. “Figueres 1936 (II), els llibres vençuts”, Revista de Girona, núm. 265, p. 52-57
Romero, Alfons. “La Biblioteca Popular de Figueres”, Annals de l'Institut d'Estudis Empordanesos, núm. 26 (1993), p. 294-304