IJIS 35 (2) pp. 175–193 Intellect Limited 2022 International Journal of Iberian Studies Volume 35 Number 2 www.intellectbooks.com 175 © 2022 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijis_00071_1 Received 23 November 2020; Accepted 26 March 2021 ADRIAN POLE The University of Edinburgh ‘Emphatically not cricket’: British eyewitness testimonies of revolutionary Catalonia, 1936 ABSTRACT In spite of significant interest in British responses to the Spanish Civil War (1936– 39), the raft of eyewitness accounts which hitherto anonymous Britons relayed to the regional press during the opening months of the conflict are yet to receive systematic attention. By using Britons who were present in Catalonia between July and September 1936 as a case study, this article seeks to reconstruct the multi- faceted process by which numerous eyewitness testimonies came into existence, as well as their subsequent relationship to broader debates about the Civil War in Britain. It argues that the lived encounters which were sustained between both tourists and long-term residents with the revolutionary events which took place in Catalonia following the military rising in July were fundamentally circumscribed by their status as foreigners, as well as their tendency to rationalize their experi- ences with the aid of pre-existing, culturally rooted stereotypes and assumptions. British reactions generated ‘on the ground’ in Spain were subsequently converted into supposedly authoritative first-hand testimonies in close cooperation with local journalists eager for sensational ‘human interest’ content, before going on to form an early input into the widespread attitude that the Spanish Civil War amounted to little more than incomprehensible anarchy. KEYWORDS Spanish Civil War news media public opinion stereotypes non-intervention Barcelona