Historian identifies 1876 Carlist detachment behind Casa Rossell weapons cache

Historian David Mas has reconstructed the episode of a Carlist detachment that in 1876 took refuge at Casa Rossell, leaving behind a hidden weapons cache and a large archive of some 3,000 documents. The arms were discovered concealed in a mattress in the early 1990s, when the property entered state heritage, and Mas has now matched artifacts and papers to identify the unit and its fate.

Mas dates the deposit to late February–March 1876, in the aftermath of the Third Carlist War in Catalonia. He concludes the cache belonged to a detachment of roughly fifteen enlisted men and two officers under Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Antonio Ribas, likely the remnants of the 1st Battalion of Lleida. That battalion had been expelled from La Seu by government forces under General Martínez Campos in March 1875, retreated to Castellciutat and resisted until August; Mas suggests the Casa Rossell group either escaped at capitulation or was isolated outside the fortress when the siege began.

Among the documentation signed by Ribas, who styles himself “comandante general interino de la Comandancia de la provincia de Lérida,” is a letter dated 26 February 1876 addressed to the “frontier of Catalonia.” In it he asks Dolors Camarlot, mistress of Casa Rossell, for provisions — bread, potatoes, oil, pork, rice, salt, beans, peas, butter, aguardiente and wine — valued at 1,426 rals (about 356.50 pesetas at the time), and notably requests fifteen pairs of espadrilles. That latter detail helped Mas confirm the detachment’s size, matching the number of long arms found.

The arsenal comprises about fifteen long guns — mostly hunting rifles but including a Remington model adopted by the Spanish army in the 1870s — roughly twenty flintlock pistols from the 18th century, percussion pistols from the 19th century, and two mid-19th-century Lefaucheux revolvers typically carried by officers. A saber inscribed “grenadier,” likely a relic from the Napoleonic wars, was also present. Uniform accoutrements recovered include two epaulettes, three berets (two red, one white), three pairs of spurs and three saddle holsters, indicating that only the officers and the lieutenant were mounted while the rest travelled on foot.

Mas situates the detachment as isolated and short of supplies on the Andorran frontier in winter. According to his reconstruction, the commanding officer sought Camarlot’s help; ultimately, recognizing that active conflict in Catalonia had ended the previous November (the Basque theatre continued for some months), they brought their arms to Casa Rossell and hid them, perhaps hoping to resume hostilities later. Afterwards the men likely dispersed to their homes or went into exile.

Casa Rossell’s selection as a refuge is explained by Dolors Camarlot’s family ties and proven Carlist sympathies. Born in Talarn to a father who had been a Carlist colonel and widow of Joaquim de Riba — a prominent Carlist in the Second Carlist War — she had even financed the casting of a cannon for Carlist troops that occupied La Seu in 1870, making her household a natural sanctuary for the last loyalists of Carles VII in Catalonia.