et bibliographie): L’Espagne (1750–1936) (Paris 1963).
37 Multatuli, who was a Dutch writer, and Panaït Israti, who was Romanian, were well known to older CNT members.
38 This was a logical Leninist stance, comparable to that of bourgeois politicians when their proposals are rejected at the ballot box. But in the USSR, the workers were already in the know; hence the sensitivity of the observations in Antón Ciliga in his 1938 book The Russian Enigma.
39 Pestaña attended the 1931 congress as representative of the administration of Solidaridad Obrera, which consisted of its editorial board (three employees), its administrators (three employees), its printing staff (five??), its panel of contributors (three), foreign correspondents (three), making a total somewhere between twelve and seventeen. See Memoria, Congreso extraordinario celebrado en Madrid del 11 al 16 de junio 1931 (a multi-copied text, no place, no date cited, published in France), 11th edition, p. 108.
40 Ángel Pestaña in Solidaridad Obrera, No. 409, 24 April 1934, reprinted in Ángel Pestaña, Trayectoria sindicalista (with foreword by Antonio Elorza) (Madrid 1974), pp. 678–679.
41 Maura Romero, writing in Government and Opposition, 1970.
42 A shrewd French (though actually Russian-born) observer at the 1931 congress, Nicolas Lazarévitch, noted: “As to the National Committee, it was taken to task for having failed to intervene with due vigour and forcefulness in response to the repression in Seville. The speeches were very violent, and some very harsh views were expressed. In spite of this, all it took was for Peiró, the director of Solidaridad Obrera, to adopt a hang-dog look of an accused man standing before the court and acknowledge his mistakes for the heartstrings of delegates to be given a tug and for them ultimately to decide not to proceed with any changes to the organisation’s leadership bodies”. N. Lazarévitch, À travers les révolutions espagnoles (Paris 1972), p. 20 (first published in La Révolution prolétarienne, No. 121, November 1931).
43 See Manuel Cruells El 6 d’octubre a Catalunya and Javier Tusell Las elecciones del Frente Popular (Madrid 1971).
44 Historia del Partido Comunista de España (Paris & Warsaw 1960), p. 111.
45 9 July 1936, front page headline.
46 12 July 1936, apropos of a strike in Sardañola at the Uralita (cement) plant.
47 14 July 1936, p. 1.
48 15 July 1936, p. 1.
49 16 July 1936, p. 1.
50 17 July 1936, p. 1.
51 17 July 1936.
52 Statement from the CNT National Committee, 14 February 1936, as reprinted in Peirats, op. cit. Vol. 1. According to the review Noir & Rouge No. 41, p. 16, the statement was drafted by the CNT’s then national secretary, Horacio M. Prieto. It is interesting to compare this outlook with that of Pestaña, by then leader of the Syndicalist Party: “Q. Is the rightist menace—of a coup d’état—one to be reckoned with, for instance? A. No! They have missed the boat. As far as the Right is concerned, the period of instability—which was very worrying at times—is over. A purge of the army and machinery of state will strip them of any chance of acting. Their current modus operandi—assassinations and terrorist attacks—is proof of their weakness”. [Interview of 18 May 1936, published in La Révolution prolétarienne, 10 June 1936, p. 224]. There is anecdotal evidence in José Robuster’s testimony, as it appears in Víctor Alba’s Colectivizadores, to bear out just how shortsighted Pestaña was with regard to what happened in Barcelona on 18 July 1936.
Chapter Two: Catalonia as a Model: Self-Management Emerges in Barcelona; The First Contradictions
Catalonia was where anarcho-syndicalism organised best at grassroots levels, although there was a separation with the upper echelons of the CNT—a phenomenon that set the pattern for other regions.
The army was defeated mostly by the CNT-FAI and Civil Guard and Assault Guards, as well as by a number of Catalanist and POUM militants. Catalonia’s Generalitat government, headed by Companys, had shown itself incapable of fight, even though it had been behind an outbreak of insurrection back in October 1934. “The proletariat armed itself; we did not have enough arms to issue to the proletariat”.53
The Catalan CNT’s regional committee found itself with almost complete mastery of the situation by 20 July 1936. A regional plenum of local and comarcal committees was hurriedly convened for that afternoon! In the wake of the attempted revolutions in 1932, January and December 1933 and in Asturias in 1934, and the publicity given to libertarian communism and the resolution passed on the subject by the Zaragoza Congress a month and a half previously, the policy to be followed was obvious, but the decision making conformed to Horacio M. Prieto’s understanding of libertarian communism [see Appendix V].
Marianet (aka Mariano Vázquez, secretary of the regional committee of Catalonia) later wrote: “[The CNT-FAI] did not let itself be over-awed by the climate, nor was it intoxicated by the swift, emphatic, resounding victory it had achieved. And amid this utter mastery of the situation, the membership looked at the wider picture and exclaimed: The towns in fascist hands must be liberated! Libertarian communism is non-existent. We must first thrash the enemy wherever he may be”.54
At a gathering of some 2,000 militants on 21 or 22 July 1936, after Vázquez and García Oliver had announced that libertarian communism was being set aside, José Peirats made a highly critical riposte, which was cut short by Juanel who gave him a tongue-lashing.55 Faced with such closed minds, Peirats walked out, as did the comrades from Hospitalet de Llobregat, except for Xena. Federica Montseny threatened to have them ‘seen to’.56
Although the leadership sang the praises of alliance with the republican bourgeoisie and put their anarchist aspirations on hold, the rank and file, espousing Horacio M. Prieto’s rationale and following the Isaac Puente line, was not interested in such considerations. Which explains the emergence of self-management in spite of everything, and despite all the leaders.
The 21 July 1936 edition of Solidaridad Obrera, on its front page, carried the following statement from the regional committee:
In these grave times, it behooves each and every one of us to abide by the general watchwords emanating from this committee. We have a common foe [illegible] in fascism. We are taking it on. Our struggle is with it, and it is it that we must crush. Nothing more, nothing less. At the same time, cognizant of our responsibilities, we have determined that all essential supply services should remain in operation, as should communications, lest the people run short of basic foodstuffs, and lest priceless liaison be interrupted.
