the Army of Africa in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco reached Barcelona, but the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, refused to give weapons to the workers and ordered anarchists carrying weapons to be detained. Nevertheless, the CNT, led by Buenaventura Durruti and Francisco Ascaso, assaulted some army depots and the prison ship Uruguay, and started to make home-made grenades and improvised armoured cars. Furthermore, Assault Guards handed out rifles to the CNT. The fight in Barcelona On 19 July, during the early hours of the day, a few hundred civilian volunteers, chiefly Carlist requetés led by José Cunill, reported to various military quarters, mostly the San Andreu barracks. Before dawn at some four in the morning, the officers in the Pedralbes Barrack told their soldiers that the government had ordered them to crush an anarchist rising in Barcelona. The troops left the Barracks and marched towards the Plaça de Catalunya, through the Avinguda Diagonal. Soon after, Companys received the news of the troops advancing towards the city. At five in the morning, the Montesa cavalry regiment, the Santiago dragoons regiment and a battery of the 7th light Regiment left their barracks and marched towards the Plaça de Catalunya, but the deployment of troops was badly co-ordinated and the junction of the rebels columns was never achieved. The rebel troops were attacked by snipers and with home-made bombs. The anarchists built barricades with paving stones in order to block the city center, and the Guardia Civil and the Assault Guards joined them against the rebel troops. Some units were forced to retreat into their barracks and others never broke into the streets, but an infantry column, led by Major Lopez Amor, reached the Plaça de Catalunya and occupied the telephone exchange, and other units occupied the Hotel Colón and the Ritz and barricaded themselves. At 11 a.m., General Goded arrived from Mallorca, went to the captain-general's headquarters, and arrested the commander of the IV Division, General Llano de la Encomienda, but the situation of the rebel troops was hopeless. After bloody combats in the Plaça de Catalunya and other parts of the city, the anarchists and the loyal troops surrounded all the rebel-held buildings in the city. The Civil Guards, led by the Colonel Antonio Escobar, assaulted the Hotel Colón and the Ritz and the anarchists occupied the telephone exchange. After that, Goded surrendered and broadcast a statement