rival Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). At the beginning of the war the PSUC came to organize the "Carles Marx" Column, formed by militants from both the party and the UGT union and under the leadership of Del Barrio and Trueba, who went to the Front of Aragon in the early days of the struggle. Later this militia would serve as a base for the formation of the 27.ª Division of the Republican Army, a unit that had a prominent intervention in several military operations. In the rear, the JSUC (youth branch) led by Lina Odena and Margarida Abril played an important role in carrying out numerous tasks for the war effort, or also in recruiting volunteers for the Republican Army. Allied with the government of Companys, of Catalan Republican Left (ERC), it faced the POUM and the initial dominion of the CNT, in a permanent political confrontation which ended with the facts of May 1937, that marked the end of the stage of greater anarcho-syndicalist dominion in Catalonia. PSUC members held positions of conseller (minister) in the governments of Lluís Companys between 1936 and 1939: Joan Comorera, as Minister of Public Services, Miquel Valdés as Minister of Labor, Rafael Vidiella as minister of Justice, Miquel Serra i Pàmies and Josep Miret i Musté conseller of supplies. Also a member of PSUC, Josep Moix i Regàs, was minister of Labor in Spanish republican government led by socialist Juan Negrin. However, as the war progressed, the Republican cause was increasingly confronted with defeat. After the fall of Catalonia in February 1939, most of its leaders fled to France, although many of its cadres remained in Spain and suffered the repression of the Franco dictatorship. In French exile they collaborated in the resistance against the Nazi occupation, and some of its members and leaders died in concentration camps, such as Josep Miret i Musté in Mauthausen in 1944. In Francoist Spain, the PSUC was outlawed and remained active clandestinely in Catalonia and in exile, in France and Mexico. Inside, they carried out a strong clandestine task that provoked strong repression. In January 1940, the first PSUC leadership was arrested underground. Alejandro Matos was killed at the police station. Otilio Alba Polo and Tomás Pons were executed. In 1942, Jaume Girabau, Isidoro Diéguez Dueñas and Jesús Larrañaga were executed after illegally arriving from Mexico and arrested at the Portuguese border. Josep Serradell