In the morning of 7 September 1937, Baleares unexpectedly met a convoy of Spanish Republican Navy ships while patrolling in the Mediterranean Sea along the coast of French Algeria, about 30 nautical miles north of the city of Cherchell.

The four destroyers quickly broke off the engagement and continued to escort the merchant convoy, probably due to the lack of training and confidence to launch a torpedo attack.

[1] While these ships steamed ahead, the cruisers Libertad and Méndez Núñez positioned to engage Baleares, which opened fire on them but did only minor damage; technical failures made the shooting of the Nationalist cruise less accurate.

The warships met again in the afternoon by the Algerian coast, with Libertad scoring two more hits on critical areas of Baleares, which then limped off to wait for her sister ship Canarias.

Most of the planes were Italian bombers from the Aviación Legionaria, a squadron of the Regia Aeronautica which fought in Spain under Nationalist leader Francisco Franco's orders.