down harshly in December 1930, the right opted to let the left bring discredit upon itself and suffer the impact of the 1929 crash, which was already making itself felt in the land. When this failed to come about, those same forces resorted to violence in 1936.
Over and above any difficulties faced at the top of the trade unions (of which more anon) the workers unionised in their droves: the UGT grew to 1,200,000 members and the CNT to at least 800,000. With that sort of following, the CNT national committee’s secretary was officially the Confederation’s only full-time and paid officer (see the “sham pyramid” below for a more nuanced picture). In fact there were only about twenty comrades who received emoluments or wages for their work—a very small number compared with the UGT.
The CNT as a harmonious whole, and the sham pyramid
The leadership, CNT cadres and FAI cadres alike, was drawn from the ranks of the working class and moulded by anarcho-syndicalism, just as they had been from the very beginning under the First International in Spain. The 1870s had seen the emergence of Anselmo Lorenzo, Tomás González Morado (both type-setters) and the like. The creation of the CNT in 1911 brought to prominence men like Galo Díez, José Negre (railway worker) and Manuel Buenacasa (carpenter). 1916–1918 threw up militants such as Salvador Seguí (painter and decorator), Ángel Pestaña (watch-maker) and Juan Peiró (glass-blower). During the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, up popped a group that included Ricardo Sanz, Buenaventura Durruti (metalworker), Juan García Oliver, Francisco Ascaso (these last two waiters), Antonio Ortiz (carpenter), etc. Come the establishment of the Republic, in came the likes of Mariano R. Vázquez (construction worker), Cipriano Mera (bricklayer) and David Antona.… During the civil war along came José Peirats (bricklayer), the Sabaté brothers (Quico Sabaté was a plumber) and Raúl Carballeira, some of whom were to lose their lives in the struggle against Francoism between 1948 and 1960.
From 1870 to 1936 and beyond, there was an uninterrupted succession of tried and tested syndicalists, all of working-class extraction. Those seventy years of militancy and working class self-education in both city and country, from Andalusia to Asturias and Catalonia, constituted the strength of the CNT. This was a mighty strength not comparable with and utterly different from what Russia had to show.
In Russia during the nineteenth century, there had been only three flare-ups of agitation: initially, the so-called Decembrists (anti-tsarist agitators drawn from the ranks of the enlightened bourgeoisie), then the exiles drawn from that same class and converted to socialism—like Herzen and Bakunin—and finally the narodniks or Populists, the offspring of the bourgeoisie who turned to the people with social ideas that were very often entirely theoretical.
Practically speaking, workers only had the twenty-five years between 1880 and 1905 to generate their own cadres. The ensuing repression decimated the educated classes and left little scope for the emergence of a fresh crop of youngsters—up until 1917, at any rate. And of the revolutionary leaders, not one was of working class extraction; they were petit bourgeois intellectuals like Lenin or Trotsky or Bukharin, etc., and their chief concern was with devouring one another at the expense of the workers, just as Makhaiski had forecast that they would, back in 1905.33
Leaders drawn from the bourgeoisie never posed a problem for the CNT as it had very few of them: we call to mind the doctors Pedro Vallina and Isaac Puente.34
The second factor accounting for the CNT’s strength was its organization, which was rooted in three things: direct action and the sindicato único, federalism and globalism.
Direct action, as defined and spelled out by the French anarcho-syndicalists at the beginning of the twentieth century, means rejecting State interference in negotiations with the bosses, and insistence upon all demands being met. In the face of it, the bosses are left with only two options: to give in, which meant success for the union and more members for it; or to stand firm, which usually triggered a flurry of strikes. Time and again the boss would hire scabs and strike-breakers who had to be persuaded to show solidarity. A violent response from the bosses, in the form of drafting in scab labour, often triggered violent pressures by a number of groups or individuals that would persuade the bosses to cave in to worker demands.
A typical example of this was the La Canadiense strike mentioned earlier. The very same tactics persisted between 1931 and 1936. When employees of the Telephone Company across Spain came out on strike, the peasants’ union in Ronda decided to support them, and its militants severed many of the telegraph posts across the region. These were union members, most of them illiterate but with a clear and effective political outlook. Lots of folk, highly educated by the standards of formal bourgeois culture, lacked any such sense of the practical.
Federalism guaranteed great flexibility of action, which was crucial given the differences between the regions. Each comarcal (county) or local committee was free to embark on action without having to consult with central committees that might have been more or less au fait with the issues. There was a example of this in 1934: the CNT and UGT could not agree on a joint approach. In Asturias, though, the two UGT and CNT regional organisations entered into a pact of alliance (which just goes to show how influential anarcho-syndicalist tactics were within the UGT), but within the Asturian regional CNT, the CNT’s local federation in La Felguera rejected the pact. This might, at first glance, seem like a contradiction and a weakness, but it reflected the local situation and actualities of the UGT and CNT. In Aragon between 1934 and 1936, cooperatives and farming ventures were boosted, which was unheard of in other regions.
The third especially distinguishing feature is what we might refer to as globalism.
The CNT never restricted itself to trade unionism and its halls were the venues for literacy classes or Ferrer Guàrdia-type schools for the young. Ever since Francisco Ferrer Guàrdia faced the firing squad in 1909, his schools had carried on with his work under the aegis of the CNT across Spain (except that now they were directed at workers’ sons and daughters, whereas Ferrer had also targeted the offspring of the bourgeoisie).35 Funding support came from some unions, and the teachers, as a rule, were militants who did their teaching at the end of their working day. The study of Esperanto was also very commonplace, as were studies in vegetarianism, naturopathic medicine, contraception, sex education (from 1910 on), women’s emancipation and excursions. All of these activities were mirrored in reviews, as well as in the trade union press. Allow me to offer a small selection of the latter from 1932: Solidaridad Obrera (Barcelona, a daily newspaper), Tierra y Libertad (Barcelona, a weekly), La Tierra (Madrid, a like-minded weekly), La Revista Blanca (Barcelona, monthly), Nosotros (Valencia, monthly), Redención (Alcoy), Acción (Cadiz), as well as newer publications like CNT (Madrid, daily), Orto (Valencia), Solidaridad Proletaria (Seville), La Voz del Campesino (Jerez) and so on. Not to mention pamphlets published under the auspices of unions or individuals and like-minded series, such as the (monthly) La Novela Ideal.36
Such multifaceted activity was neither redundant nor overdoing it. There was a point-by-point challenge to Catholic culture: starting at birth when first names like Acracio, Floreal, Germinal, Helios, etc., or Luz, Libertaria, Alba, Acracia, etc. were given—rather than Jesús, Salvador, Ignacio or Iñaki (after Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola), or, to take some female examples, Covadonga (the first mock-historical victory over the Muslims, featuring Santiago Matamoros, butcher of the unbelievers), Amparo (the protection of the Virgin Mary), Soledad or Dolores (a reference to the suffering of the Virgin), not to mention the litany of locations where there had been apparitions of the Virgin, places popularising names such as Pilar, Begoña, Guadalupe, Montserrat, Nuria, etc. Later, after death, atheists or poor Christians were excluded from Catholic graveyards. Even the preferred literary authors such as Tolstoy, Zola, Multatuli and Panaït Istrati37
