The bombing of Barcelona was a series of airstrikes led by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany supporting the Franco-led Nationalist rebel army, which took place from 16 to 18 March 1938, during the Spanish Civil War.

[4] Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, without informing Francisco Franco beforehand, decided to carry out massive air bombing raids against Barcelona in the belief that it would "weaken the morale of the Reds".

[7] Rather than aiming at military targets, the Italians intended to destroy industrial areas of the city and demoralize the Republican side, in what some authors have described as the first aerial carpet bombing in history.

[1] Their targets and declared objectives were military warehouses, arms factories, trains with soldiers, and the port, but civil buildings, cinemas, consulates, and theatres were also hit or destroyed during the bombing.

He reported that the bombers had glided in at high altitude to avoid being detected by the acoustic aircraft detectors, and only restarted their engines after releasing their bomb loads, which he termed the "silent approach" method.

Coupled with the fact that there was little discernible military value in the choice of targets within the city, and the cessation of the attacks for no apparent reason, Langdon-Davies determined that the raids constituted a deliberate experiment in the use of such tactics in preparation for their application in any subsequent conflict by the Germans and Italians against the United Kingdom.