it controlled, with a government delegation stationed in the building that crucially controlled Catalan telephone communications. On 2 May, the Minister of Marine and Air, Indalecio Prieto, telephoned the Generalitat from Valencia. An anarcho-syndicalist telephonist on the other side replied that in Barcelona there was no government, only a Defense Committee. The government was convinced that anarchists were recording their telephone conversations since they, of course, had the means to do so. The same day, there was a call from President Manuel Azaña to Companys, President of the Generalitat. During the conversation, it was cut by the operator, who said that the lines should be used for more important purposes than a mere talk between presidents. For some time, Republican authorities had been suspecting that anarcho-syndicalists controlled all official telephone conversations, and such incidents were the last straw. The same afternoon, on 2 May, shots were exchanged between members of Estat Català and the FAI in Barcelona, killing a member of the latter. 3 May A force of 200 police officers, commanded by the Minister of Public Order of the Government of Catalonia, Eusebio Rodríguez Salas, went to the Telefónica central exchange and presented itself at the censorship department located on the second floor, with the intention of taking control of the building. The anarchists saw that as a provocation since Telefónica was legally occupied by an anarcho-syndicalist committee, according to a decree on collectivization from the Generalitat itself. Rodríguez Salas, on his part, had authorization from the head of internal affairs of the regional government, Artemi Aiguader i Miró. The anarchist workers opened fire from the second-floor landing of the censorship department. Salas phoned in for help, with a company of the National Republican Guard arriving along with two Control Patrols heads, Dionisio Eroles (of the anarchist police station) and José Asens (of the Control Patrols). Eroles persuaded the CNT workers to cease fire; although they resisted at first, they surrendered their weapons, not before shooting through the windows to empty their ammunition. A crowd gathered in Plaça Catalunya, and at first, it was believed that the anarchists had captured the head of the police. The POUM, the Friends of Durruti Group, the Bolshevik-Leninists and the Libertarian Youth took positions, and after a few hours, all of the political parties had taken out the weapons that they had hidden and began building barricades. From that skirmish, battles began in