This research focuses on the analysis of the Autonomous Center for Dependents of Commerce and Industry-Workers’ Entity, CADCI, during the civil war. Since its founding in 1903, the organization has expressed the national path of labor vindication for commercial workers. Its strategy was adapted to the new demands of the dependents, who were increasingly proletarianized and aware of being part of the working class. From the 1930s onwards, the implementation of pioneering measures for the sector and the increase in the prestige of the entity will place the CADCI at the forefront of Catalan commercial organizations. This activity, together with its participation in the October 6 insurrection, made the Center play a relevant role in the anti-fascist and workers’ movement. The analysis of the war effort of the mercantile entity helps us to ascertain this relevance and to carefully study the evolution of the multiplicity of functions undertaken in order to attend to the workers of the trade, both at the front and at the rearguard. During the war, the organization had thousands of members, from 23,000 members in July 1936 to more than 50,000 a year later. By the end of 1938, 11,000 associates, 22% of its militancy, were at the front. On the other hand, the possibility of making CADCI the third Catalan trade union center was raised. The option would fade when the UGT’s regional membership was ratified in July 1937. From then until the end of the war, the Center continued to operate independently of the Regional, located in the priority axis of action to its Military Secretariat and especially to the Committee of Aid to the Combatant directed by the mercantile workers. Going deeper into the history of the CADCI allows us to investigate why he suffered the triple Francoist repression carried out on the organization, its members and its social status. The military appropriation of the building located at number 10 of the Rambla de Santa Mònica, took place on January 26, 1939, only to be occupied Barcelona. A few weeks later he was searched by the staff of the Office of the State Delegation for the Recovery of Documents, DERD. The agency was responsible for locating, confiscating and controlling all documentation that provided data on enemies in order to identify, as quickly as possible, the maximum number of people and entities that had participated or collaborated with the Republic to be able to process and purify them. The repressive purpose marked the conservation of the requisite documentary heritage, as everything that was considered useless for the extraction of information about disaffected people was eliminated. A part of the stolen documentation is the one that forms the fund restituted to the CADCI between 2008 and 2014, in application of the Law 21/2005, pertinent of the Documentary Center of the Historical Memory of Salamanca. The 1,213 cataloging units, more than 105,000 foliated documents, are the documentary basis of our research. Headquarters has not been returned. Its history motivates and structures much of the research. Through its four closures, we study the evolution of the Center, the increase in popular support and the strengthening of the link network that was key to overcoming the periods of secrecy. At the same time, we analyze the precedents of repressive action and the process of resignification of the building, which, during the war, was consolidated as a place of commemoration and symbol of anti-fascist resistance. The research examines the implications of retrieving it as a place of memory and history. To this end, a series of interventions are proposed for this space that houses the multiplicity of stories of the history of the Catalan labor movement.
