On October 6, 1934, the Catalan Generalitat under President Lluís Companys declared a Catalan State within the Spanish Republic in response to the inclusion of right-wing CEDA ministers in the national government. The uprising in Barcelona was quickly and brutally suppressed by the Spanish Army, with Companys and other Catalan leaders arrested and imprisoned. The suppression of Catalan autonomy deepened the rift between Catalonia and the central government, a wound that would persist through the civil war.

The 1934 Catalan uprising and its suppression inspired a wave of Catalan nationalist poetry, with writers like Josep Carner and J.V. Foix expressing the collective trauma of the region's subjugation. The event also marked the beginning of the radicalization of Catalan intellectuals, many of whom would become committed Republicans during the civil war, writing poetry in both Catalan and Castilian.