Invasion of Val d'Aran

The Invasion of Val d'Aran, known under the code name Operación Reconquista de España ("Operation Reconquest of Spain"), was a military operation lanched on October 1944 by the Unión Nacional Española (antifrancoist) (UNE). According to historian Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand, the UNE was a "structure of a large alliance, (which) united not only Communists, but also Spaniards of different political alignments – Socialists, Republicans or Anarchists – who the dispersion of their organizations and the silence of their leaders pushed into joining the only fighting structure organised against Nazism". This operation aimed to establish a provisional Republican government in the Val d'Aran, a Pyrenean valley of Catalonia, situated on the border between France and Spain, to act as a launching point for an attack of antifranquist guerrilas that participated in World War II within the French resistance and veterans of the Spainish Civil War in the territory. It was a total failure.