The morning mist clung low over Barcelona like a mourning veil, the rising sun struggling to pierce the ash-choked sky.
Buildings still bore the wounds of war, bullet holes in the façades, craters in cobbled roads, scorched ruins where anarchist firebombs had consumed homes and barricades alike.
Yet the guns were silent.
For the first time in nearly two years, silence returned to the capital of Catalonia, not the tense, pregnant silence of dread, but something else.
Something closer to breathless anticipation.
From the heights of Montjuïc Castle, the Republican tricolor, tattered, frayed, and half-burned, hung limp.
Wind barely touched it, as if the fabric itself had given up the fight.
Below, from the western gate, came the sound of armor.
A low rumble. Rhythmic. Measured. Metallic.
The Royal Spanish Army had arrived.
